monitor not getting any signal... again!!

it all began last october when i purchased a GE webcam for my desktop pc. i read the instructions on how to install the webcam and followed them exactly as instructed. the last step of the installation said to restart my computer, so i did. When my pc rebooted after i agreed to restart, i immediately got the BSOD (blue screen of death). by the way, my computer is running 32-bit windows vista home premium and i always keep microsoft security essentials installed and running also. so anyhow, i thought it kinda strange and i restarted it again and this time it failed to boot completely. so i had to do it again but this time i manually choose my hard drive from the list of boot devices in my boot options menu and it took a little longer than usual, but it started up. I immediately uninstalled the webcam driver that seemed to have started this whole problem to begin with. for days after this, i noticed that my computer was very sluggish and slow. it kept hanging up on simple commands and overall seemed "not itself" at all. I tried system restore and restored it back to a day before i installed the web cam driver, this wasn't any help. i decided to do a factory restore at this point because the system was constantly hung up and pretty well unusable in the state that it was in. after the factory restore, i of course reinstalled my anti virus and the computer seemed to be doing much better to say the least. one problem that i didn't really think much of after the factory restore was that my internal wireless pcie card that i had been using for atleast 6 months prior was not working anymore or could not find any networks? i just wanted my computer back, so i went down to the store and purchased a usb wireless adapter so that i could get online. this worked and i was back online. i just figured that the generic pcie card that i had bought for dirt cheap had finally taken a dump and quit working because "you get what you pay for". over the next few weeks i continued to use my computer and since i did not have any external hard drive to back up to at the time i did the factory restore, i was starting out fresh and adding files to my computer again. oh, in the mean time, my brother had asked me if i had an extra wireless pcie card that he could use with his computer. I told him that i had the one that i was using in my computer until it quit working, or so i had thought. i told him that he was welcome to see if it would work and to keep it if he could get it to work. so he tried it out, and it worked from the start, like a charm. i noted this in the back of my mind but at the time my computer seemed well and fine, so i soon forgot about this too. a couple more weeks went by when i went to use a jailbreaking program that i used pretty regularly to jailbreak an iphone. I had just used the program the night before and now i found the file that the program had been saved in, but it was no longer there- the folder was empty? I thought this was very strange because like i had said, i used the program the night before and it was right there. I then proceeded to search all of the files on my computer with hopes that somehow i had moved the program by mistake and it would turn up somewhere. It was nowhere to be found? finally i gave up on finding it and i downloaded the program again so that i could use it. once again, a couple of weeks passed before i had any other problems. This time, i had bought a new internal wireless pci card for wireless internet, partially because i was interested to know if it was gonna work since the last one quit on me, or so i had thought. I followed the instructions on how to install it and the wireless utility icon appeared in my taskbar but i could not get it to find any wireless networks in range and there should have been atleast two of them. At this point, i took the computer over to my friends house so that he could observe it for a few days and see what he thought. he didn't really see a whole lot of problems with it after he played on it for a week or two. The one thing that he also noticed and found strange was how the wireless card seemed to be installed correctly and showed up in the device manager, yet it couldn't find any wireless networks no matter how you configured it. he went as far as putting another card, if i recall correctly it was an external video card? into the same pci slot that the wireless card had been in just to see if it would work... it worked fine. so now we knew that the pci slot did indeed function, it just wouldn't work for the wireless card for whatever reason. he didn't know what to tell me either, he just said to take it home and see how it works and let him know of any further problems i may have. about a month later, i went out of town for the weekend and after i had already left i remembered that i forgot to shut down my computer before i left. i figured that it would be fine since it would probably just hibernate and thats all. i got home on sunday night and my computer was not running. i must have just forgot that i had shut it down? i turned it on and my monitor power light turned from orange to green and then my screen flashed VGA NO SIGNAL, and then the light turned orange again and the screen stayed black. i tried this several more time with the same result. i researched the problem online for a few days and decided to purchase a new psu since the one that came in it from the factory was only 250watts which i thought was hardly enough power. i hoped that this would fix the problem. i received the new psu that i bought online about 2 weeks later and i immediately put it in and reconnected all of the connections. i fired it up, and still, nothing! no vga signal. I did not have any external video card, only the integrated one. i did try an external one before i purchased the psu, but got the same results- no vga signal. this was when i was about to give up on it and i decided as a last ditch effort, i was gonna look at my motherboard closer. so i got a flashlight and took the side panel off and looked the motherboard over very carefully for any signs that anything got hot. finally, right below one of the heatsinks (on my board there are two, one on the cpu and then another down below it), there was a brown spot on the board where it looked like something had gotten hot. so, i figured that this was my sign that this mother board had seen it's last day. i immediately began looking for a replacement that would work with the cpu and other hardware that i already had. i found one a few days later that was reasonably priced and i bought it. it came in the mail about a week later. i had never replaced a mother board before but i'm ususlly pretty good when it comes to that kinda thing so i looked up some basic how to's and went to work. i got everything hooked back up and plugged it into power and wa-la! it worked! woo-hoo! so i'm dinging around online and washing the dishes at the same time and i take a break from the computer so i can dry the dishes. suddenly i noticed that the room fell silent. i could no longer hear the fans on my computer running. i peeked around the corner towards my computer and the screen was dark. i wiggled the mouse, but the screen stayed dark. i looked at the computer and it was off? what could be the problem now? I turned the computer on and i heard the fans and i think i heard the hard drive? again- no vga signal! wow! i could not believe this was happening! Before taking the unit and disposing of it in the nearest dumpster, i decided that i would wait and see if it would work again after it had a chance to completely cool down. i waited for about an hour and a half and tried it again and still no signal. I gave up on it for about two days before i went back to try it again. Two days later, i hit the power button and it fires right up screen and all. this is great, but now there is a message on my screen that says that this copy of windows has not been activated and asks me if i would like to activate now. i had never seen this before, yet i didn't think that it was normal because i had not changed anything or done anything to cause the operating system to not be activated all of the sudden. so i messed around on it for about an hour and then i was leaving for awhile, so i shut the system down. i returned a few hours later and turned it on and there i found myself right back at the no signal to my monitor problem which is where i've been stuck for almost two weeks now. yes, i have tried other monitors and cords and nothing works. i don't know if my hard drive is booting or not. i think that i can hear a faint whistling sound kinda but i'm not sure with the noise from the fans and all. i know that when i push the power button to turn the unit off, it shuts off right now without having to hold it for 3-5 seconds or whatever? i am at the end of my patience with this damn computer but i don't have the financial means to replace it right now. i am hoping that somebody who reads this post will know something that i don't and is willing to help me out. PLEASE!! the motherboard i purchased to replace my old one is an ECS NVIDA GF8200A BLACK EDITION MOTHERBOARD. MY CPU IS AN AMD ATHLON 4050e 64 x2. i haven't overclocked my cpu or gpu or anything fancy like that. the only reason that i bought the black edition motherboard was because it was compatible with my cpu and i got it for a really reasonable price. i have a 250GB wD hard drive that has been in the computer since i purchased it new in 2008? The hard drive seemed to be working fine last i knew but who knows? i know i am out of ideas, out of money to put into it and i've been out of patience with the whole thing for so long now. oh, and just incase this helps, the replacement psu that i purchased for this pc was a 650 watt dual fan psu. if you need any further details that i may be able to provide you with just let me know and i will respond as promptly as possible. thank

Reply 1 : monitor not getting any signal... again!!

You're going to need to try that again, and this time include some paragraph breaks or something. Just hit the enter key twice.

Like this.

And it will automatically put in a paragraph break. If you simply hit tab, as you may have been trained back in the day, it just shows up as a single space. But as it is now, it's just this giant block of text, and it's very difficult to work through. Since you are the one looking for help, it's on you to make things as easy as possible for those of us who may be able to help.