Windows 7: can a burnt vid card stop a startup boot?

Ok here is the question my cousin brought his old p4 to me for a upgrade he is only able to run ddr2100 266mhz max ram i dont know his cpu exactly but pretty much first start and mind you this is the set up he had already with a 256 mb mem chip installed

nothing happened not even a beep so i went around checking all the connections so forth but then i noticed the video cards fan wasn't spinning could this cause a pc malfuntion that would keep it from booting?

At boot, the BIOS checks all the components in the system. I am not certain how it would react to a defunct Graphics, but I am certain it would not boot because it could not even display anything on the monitor.
Whether a fan can do that though, I am not sure. Maybe the fan sets only in when a certain temperature is reached.

if the card is fried you should get 1 long and 2 short beeps upon startup providing you have the speaker hooked up on your motherboard.
Award bios beep codes BiosCentral - Award BIOS Beep Codes assuming it's an award bios.
Generally the video card fan spins upon startup, unlesss the cards bios tells it to wait till a certian temp.
Are you able to see the startup screen or is their no no display at all? this would be an indication your card is fried. Fabe

well reason im asking is my cousin said before he brought the compuiter to me it was working i didnt touch anything and then i tryed to fire it up and nothing i checked everything swaped drives ect

no beeps heard i really didnt even hear the harddrive spin

after that i looked at the little card for the monitor the fan was inmobile so i figured maybe the card burnt out cause i basicly told him his system died untill i seen the card fan not spinning so i figure i might be able to save it

if not i guess hell have to invest in a better system basicly he just wanted to upgrade the ram cause he is running programs that makes his system way to slow

but why would i put new ram in a machine that doesnt even boot ?

so i am really open to suggestions cause it doesnt make sense if it was running and when i get it it is not unless he is lying about it working before it got to me but i doubt he'll do that lol

I'm gonna ask a question, and just so you don't think I'm trying to be insulting, I'll tell a little story first.

I was doing some work in my new build a couple of weeks ago. I was putting in a bigger CPU fan. When I set it all back up, there was no boot. No power, no lights... I thought I had screwed something up for sure. I checked and checked everything inside the case, scratched my head, and was a bout to have a full on breakdown because I'd broken my brand new machine. Then I remembered that I had shut off the main power switch on the back of the power supply.

Your cousin didn't turn off that little switch by any chance?

And a broken anything can keep the PC from booting up. I just fried a RAM stick last weekend, and the machine just froze. When I tried to reboot, it was a no go. No status beeps or HDD activity. It just sat there dead until I shut it off and pulled out the bad stick, so you can't always count on the diagnostic beeps. But if the GPU fan isn't turning, I'd suspect a power issue first. Pull the card and see if the PC will boot without it, then put it back in.

Yep.

If it's still dead in the water (nothing happening at all - not even error beeps) after removing the card - then the issue lies elsewhere.

Considering the age of the machine, I'm guessing it's probably an AGP card and not a PCI-E (for testing purposes)

Alternatively, does that motherboard have integrated video by any chance?

Also, did you remove the existing RAM prior to firing it up?

well the switch i turn it off and on to work on it so that is not a issue and the card is agp and the only device in there to use for monitor he told me he got it from best buy like 5 years ago

I told him for what they sold him they didn't give him anything everything was bottom of the barrell and never to buy from there again

the card itself i have no way of testing im not even using agp anymore and my last agp card 7300gt was sold to a friend a while back

I guess i can turn it on with out the card and see if it beeps cause i cant see any reason it wasnt working the only thing we did to the rig was pull a ram stick out to figure which ram is suited then i went further wrote down the mb specs and looked it up so ..............

I will try to fire it up with no card maybe it will beep ? will reply back

Re-seat the RAM. It may not be be properly seated.

well i honestly think his rig is gone the removal of the card and turning it on didnt do anything i chalk it up to his mainboard

the sad thing is he is really persistant on taking to a shop that will tell him the same thing i offered to build a new rig but i don't know if he wants to spend cash which is sad

can't expect much if your not willing to pay for it

there was only one stick i took it and put it to the other slot locked the clips into place the clips snapped meaning successfull install i also have the ram he bought for this rig still installing that didnt help and i didnt want to fry it in case we took it back

now i feel it just took a dump i also told him when he brought it to me from his home a distance from me it could have gotten jarred on the trip

just looking into all aspects