Big trouble in little Italy

[Guest Just.A.PC.Tech]

Hi there.

I'm a PC technician from Italy, and to make it (not so) short I would need your community help to solve some problems I encountered a few days ago with a notebook (Acer Aspire 5920G) I repaired about two months ago.

The laptop came with a fried 8600GS Turbocache Nvidia video chipset, which I swapped with an ATI HD3650 from eBay (Taiwan).

Laptop was bought without invoice, so no warranty coming from the original dealer.

The new card, even if stressed with the right softwares, showed immediately my choice goodness: the customer leaved feeling good and lucky to have solved his problems, foreseeing a bright future.

Now I'm stressed, 'cos I'm feeling bad and unlucky and I'm wandering in the dark !

Here is my current situation: the laptop sometimes doesn't pass the BIOS loading Phase, more often it's able to boot XP Pro SP3+ (even with video card removed), and never, never, never (did I say "never" ?) want to give me the joy to watch a bright and colorful screen showing the fully loaded OS.

Well, I've already made all possible tests, and a very little hope came up during a very poorly conceived almost impossible one: I even tried to hook the laptop to an external monitor after removing VGA, and I noticed a quick blinking on the screen only when I used the FN+F5 and FN+F6 keys combos. ONLY IN THESE TESTING CONDITIONS, you see.

Could someone help me solve my problems ?

Uh, a last doubt: just having a bath in my deep ignorance, could I learn from someone if is it ABSOLUTELY normal a laptop boots straight to the OS without the VGA, while a desktop system starts beeping and doesn't boot at all if this device is removed ?

I hope you can understand my English.

Many thanks in advance.

[Guest Just.A.PC.Tech]

One more detail, maybe useful.

I removed the very poor thermal pads coming with the first video card, and used IC Diamond 7 Carat compound with the ATI HD3650.