Flakey pc video card

G

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Guest
I have a 5 year old Dell 8300 with a ATI Radeon 9500 Pro video card. I recently replaced the original DVD Player/CD writer with a Sony DVD writer. Subsequently, everything appeared to work fine after booting up. After a trip home from a friends house where the swap took place, I began to experience video issues. At first I got some "video jibberish" on the Dell splash screen, but the rest of the boot was okay. Eventually, I had to jiggle the monitor cable and now I have the tower opened and have to jiggle the card itself, with varying results. Close examination of the card and connector reveals no apparent damage, cold solder joints, etc. Sometimes it boots okay, sometimes it quits half way through the boot sequence, sometimes it boots all the way through Windows and then quits. Tried swapping power cables with no noticeable difference. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.