So my monitor decided to crap itself...

Darklyre

...I think. My old Dell monitor goes into power save mode immediately on boot (as in, I saw a boot screen once and it immediately jumped into power save. Even if I restart, I never see the boot screen again. However, I know my tower is working because I can log into Vista and access my HDD via my network and laptop.

Anyone have any idea as to what's happening? It can't be a motherboard or RAM issue because the computer works fine, and I've already tried replugging the cables and resetting the monitor's power. Granted, my LCD is 13 years old, but it was still working perfectly up until today (no dead pixels, even!). Is my monitor on the verge of death no matter what? :cry:

Dhalphir

Is there any way to borrow or transport your computer to try another monitor? It could be a monitor or a graphics card issue and you won't really have any way of knowing unless you can try another card or another monitor.

Dhalphir

Actually, you say you have a laptop, why not try plugging the monitor into that? (if you can)

Djeet

It's very likely your monitor is fucked. The most common issues are going to be the power supply or inverter. You could try to fix, but at 13 years out you may have difficulty sourcing parts, and new monitors can be had at $100-150. Not sure why the fact it was working yesterday should matter when it's broke today; this is not a mechanical device. Shit breaks, and when electronic shit breaks it's often with no warning.

You could try reseating the video cable after system boots up, but I don't expect that to do much other than flash the current screen output before becoming unresponsive. Alternately your GPU could be at fault, but dead monitor is way more likely.


Edit: As grouch says, it could be blown caps. Remove the housing and inspect caps (cylinder-shaped doohickeys soldered to circuit board, likely on power supply board). Look for bulging or leaking (could be black stuff, could be whitish crystalline stuff). Caps are pretty cheap and if you'd like to try your hand at soldering (or have a friend) this could be a relatively cheap fix.

grouch993

Had similar problems. Found capacitors to replace burnt ones on the power supply board. Did not work and ended up with a new 27" monitor (so win for me). This was about $10 with shipping for two large capacitors. New monitor price to fix.

Similar issue on a 52" samsung lcd tv. Bought the replacement capacitors and fixed the board. It is still entertaining my family. Spent $150 on the service manual and $15 on six capacitors. So $165 to fix.

Darklyre

So, uh, it started working again. For no reason. I turned the whole system off, monitor and all, and left it like that for 20 minutes. When I turned it back on, everything was peachy.

Thanks for the tips, I guess? I'm at a total loss to explain how it fixed itself, but as long as it did I guess I can't really complain.

grouch993

Well, if it keeps working, great. If it happens again, expect whatever is failing to happen more frequently until complete failure.

punk

You could do what I did to my old Samsung 19" LCD when it started to act up: hit it really hard. Works every time!