The motherboard started flakin out a month back: my PCIe Geforce 9800 stopped being recognized even in Device Manager, even when I told the bios to use PCIe as primary display driver.
Is there a chance it hurt the gfx card if I left it plugged in as normal while I ran the PC on and off for a few weeks? I've had to get some work done while running the PC on the onboard gfx chipset, then left it on for about two hours at a time once or twice a week to recharge an ipod when the PC stopped booting windows altogether (it gave the Dos "HARD DISK OR BOOT DISK ERROR"), and now after about three weeks of it being off because it wouldnt even post, Ive managed to restart the PC using an old HDD and took the opportunity to get some work done with the basic stuff (no video and sound drivers, just enough to run MS-Office etc). It still doesnt see the graphics card in the device manager. The card sounds normal, does the same routine (fan spin-up on boot and shut down) as it normaly would..
