I was going to build a second lesser rig out of a bunch of pieces i had collected over the years and when i turned it on i smelled smoke. i plugged in a monitor and there was no picture, so i turned it off and loosened the heatsink on the cpu and when i turned the computer on i got a blue-screen with a messege saying something like"windows has stopped....a problem with the system..." i cant remember it well because it was a week ago. Now im over the fact i messed up...but i want to sell the GPU i was using for that rig. its a gts450 and i want to know if i could sell it without worrying about someone getting it and it be dead....or cause other problems. what im going with now is that since SOMTHING did come up on the screen that the gpu wasnt the one affected. I would like to sell the ram i used aswell. any info would be appreciated   Hi

As windows started although didn't completely boot you could try the computer with a linux boot disk which you could use to test the memory and graphics card.

I have a copy of Parted magic for this purpose available from here  https://partedmagic.com/

In other tools there is memtest to CHECK the memory

And if it boots into the desktop then that would be a test of the video card

I recommend as you had smoke from somewhere that you stay with the computer while testing
I could test the video card on my new system but i don't want the card, if it is broken, to mess up anything. would it? or would it just give me an ERROR messege and i plop my other vid card in there and EVERYTHING is fine again?i agree with what Lisa said...there are lots of live boot cd/dvd options that will enumerate your hardware and boot you into a gui of some kind where you can review your hardware....if your gpu shows up there its probably fine.