When I start my PC, the monitor light will only blink, the screen stays black. Does this mean the video card is bad, or are there other things that I should check?

If your video card is actually bad it will fail the POST check by BIOS (Power Up Self Test) and respond with a series of beeps sent through the PC speaker.

If it's just black then BIOS is reading VGA out through the motherboard, and something else is the problem (even BIOS itself, which usually fails if there is a ground fault or component failure)

Look for damaged/bulging/leaking electrolytic capacitors on the board, shake the unit gently to dislodge any foreign objects that might have fallen in.

If you still have no luck, start removing devices from the system until you get a response. Remove peripherals one by one, and power cycle it each time, in this order:

USB devices except keyboard
NICs and modems
Sound cards
Other IDE/PCI cards
IDE drives
SCSI drives
RAM, DIMM by DIMM
Keyboard
Video card

At some point you should at least get a POST fault in the form of a beep. If you don't, the board is dead.

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When I start my PC, the monitor light will only blink, the screen stays black. Does this mean the video card is bad, or are there other things that I should check?

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When I start my PC, the monitor light will only blink, the screen stays black. Does this mean the video card is bad, or are there other things that I should check?

Answers. 1 helpful answer below.

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