And why weren't you a comedian? I've never seen bad system RAM take out the video like this. Bad RAM can cause all kinds of funny stuff but I've never seen it take out video but seemingly allow the machine to boot normally.
Yeah.. that does seem to agree with your original diagnosis of it being the video card.. If you have any old cards, it would be worth a try to see if any of them will work for you before you buy anything... If the existing card is integrated into the motherboard, you may have a more troublesome issue, as a chip failure on the board normally takes more than just one thing down with it...and more often than not, its a result of a power surge or under voltage issue, that can cause all kinds of havoc on electronics.. either way it wouldn't hurt to clean everything and try another card, before spending any money on it.
I've bought a number of things thru Mercadolibre, and have never had a problem.. of'course I've never used a credit card to pay for anything there.. I simply get the deposit info from the seller, pay at the bank, and wait for my stuff to arrive.. so long as you buy from sellers with a good record, I think you have pretty good odds of getting what you order... I wouldn't recommend giving your CC numbers to anyone over the internet or phone either way, regardless of where you are.. I was a little leary of the idea of paying someones bank account and then hoping they live up to their end of the deal and send my stuff the first time, but so far I haven't had any trouble.. and since you have their bank info, if they do try to screw you, you can track them down and use the record of that bank payment and the Mercadolibre order to file a complaint against them... so all in all, I'm fairly comfortable with it...
I'm writing this post on my resurrected Dell. It was the video card, I have a new one imported from the US courtesy of a kind member of this forum. Thank you very much to all who helped with this. Saludos Rob
