h all , i have just built my first pc and had the problem where when i booted i had no display !! i had a radeon x1300 pro 256mb graphics card on a pci e 16 slot on a asus a8ne board (with a athlon 64 a2 4200 processor) . i resat the processor and checked everything was fitted well and it booted to bios. i rebooted and same again - no display. i took the graphics card out and had a look at it - on the gold bits that go into the slot , two of the prongs that go in only had half the prong covered in gold - thinking this was a fualty board i put in a spare normal pci card and hey presto botted no probs (did this several times and booted ok each time) . on entering the bios i noticed the setting for initial display card was set to pci no pci e - should i set this to pci e and put the radeon back in ? do some cards have legs that arent fully coated in gold ? am confused as to whther the card is duff or not ? or could it be a duff pci e slot ?
any thoughts appredciated

A defective slot is very rare, since as long as the chipset is functioning (which is part of the manufacturer QC), a slot is just a bit of plastic with contacts wired to the motherboard.

It doesn't really matter which interface the BIOS is configured to boot first if you only have one graphics card because when it doesn't find a VGA controller connected to the PCI bus, it will simply proceed to PCI Express. It's actually better to keep this configured to PCI, just in case your system does experience some sort of graphics problem in the future and you can't get to the BIOS to change it to PCI first.

There is always a short leg second from the back of a PCI Express device, designated as hot plug detect. Although card and motherboard limited, PCI Express should support hot plugging (inserting and removing a card while the system is running). The hot plug contact is short so that the card will only be initialised when all the other contacts are made; It could be especially dangerous to power up the device before grounding pins are connected for example. Don't try inserting or removing cards during operation though (especially the graphics card!) - support for this is not guaranteed, just part of the standard.

As for your problem, make doubly sure the card is inserted properly. Be firm with it. When installed, none of the gold contacts should be visible, and when you firmly push the card (into the slot), there should be no movement. If you still out of luck, reset the BIOS by using the CMOS RESET jumper (check the manual for the location, but it should be in the general area of the battery). The jumper has to be on short (1-2, or connected as described in the manual) for a good 10 seconds, with the power fully disconnected.

Let us know how it goes!