my radeon 8500 problem

hi guys,

so i had a 8500 laying around home and figured why not try to put a nicer heatsink on it. the problem is something must have go wrong
because with the new heatsink my card works only without the driver installed or in safe mode.

what can be the problem?

the card seems sound but it does not like any drivers.

maybe there is something like a bios update from ATI?

NO RMA possible so maybe you guys have an idea.

thanks in advance

i think its dead

now dont trust me on this but i think all gpus have a slow generic display chip that allows it to display during bootup and in safe mode(ie 8 color 640x480), and when you use the drivers it uses the main chip, and when you installed the heatsink you killed that.

i think this is right but i truely dont know

how did you attach the heatsink?

when i changed my hsf on my 8500 i had the same problem. it scared the **** out of me. i thought i fried my card , but later i found out when i took the card out to fit the hsf and replace it. when i put the 8500 back i bit of dust got caught in the agp slot and was screwing things up. i clean the agp and reinserted and all was well. dont know if thats the case with u but its worth a shot