I have a desktop PC Dell Inspiron 3847. The motherboard has two PCI Express x1 card slots. It is running Windows 10.
I have the StartTech 2 Port PCI Express 1394a FireWire Card Part# PEX1394A2V2.
The StartTech card fits in the PC slot. When I power on the PC, nothing happens, no beeps, nothing on screen. The power light is lit and the fans run but that is all. I have tried the card in both PCIe slots.
When I remove the Startech card, the system powers on normally and Windows 10 is running normally.
How do I solve this problem?
Hello @cdlund99,
Thank you for taking the time to post on the Startech.com Community. I am sorry to hear about the trouble you are experiencing with PEX1394A2V2.
If the operating system is not booting with our card installed then it is possible the issue is something within your computer’s BIOS/UEFI that is causing a conflict.
I would recommend going into your computer’s BIOS/UEFI settings while our card is not installed and checking if you may have an option to specify a version of PCIe that the slots use, rather than allowing it to automatically detect the version. While this kind of setting is not available on all systems, we have seen it help in some similar situations with PCIe cards before so it is a good setting to test if you have it available.
If this setting is not available or you are still unable to boot while our card is installed after trying to change the PCIe version, it would be best to test the PEX1394A2V2 with a different model of computer to confirm if it experiences the same problem with a different model or if the issue is isolated to this Dell Inspiron 3847.
Please let me know your results with these steps. I look forward to hearing back from you!
Lukas T
Thank you for your suggestions. However, I still need more help.
I have checked the Inspiron 3847 BIOS and there is no option related to the PCIe slots.
I have found some posts on the Internet that suggest PCIe ver 1 will not work with this PC. What PCIe version is this card?
I have tried this card on a Dell Optiplex 9020 also running Windows 10. Same result: power light and fans turn on, but nothing else. When the card is removed the PC works normally.
Hello @cdlund99,
PEX1394A2V2 does use PCIe 1.0. While PCIe slots that are newer versions of PCIe should be backwards compatible with cards that use older versions of PCIe, based on the information you found from Dell this unfortunately does not seem to be the case with the Inspiron 3847. As you are getting the same results with the Inspiron 9020, I suspect that it may not support PCIe 1.0 cards either.
Unfortunately we do not have an alternative solution that I could recommend which would be a different version of PCIe. I apologize for the inconvenience.
Lukas T