Computer monitor won't turn on.

hesthefastest

Help! KSP has a new update and my compy is out of commission.
Did some quick googling and found only general troubleshooting and the symptoms are very specific so I thought someone would know the problem right away.
-start up compy
-screen flashes start up screen (1 second) then dark
-twenty seconds later same thing
-compy is running fine, just can't see anything
Used to happen intermittently, a restart would fix it, but now its stuck.
Im thinking either screen or power supply, any ideas?
Thanks

aioua

hesthefastest wrote: »

Help! KSP has a new update and my compy is out of commission.
Did some quick googling and found only general troubleshooting and the symptoms are very specific so I thought someone would know the problem right away.
-start up compy
-screen flashes start up screen (1 second) then dark
-twenty seconds later same thing
-compy is running fine, just can't see anything
Used to happen intermittently, a restart would fix it, but now its stuck.
Im thinking either screen or power supply, any ideas?
Thanks

This is probably your monitor. I don't suppose you've another one to test with?

Or perhaps a laptop, hook up the monitor as a second screen on the lappy.

Irredeemably Indecisive

Does the screen work on a different computer? Does the computer work with a different screen? Have you made sure all connections are solid and not loose? Are there any POST beeps, and if so how many?

The 20 second later line sounds like the computer is automatically rebooting once due to a startup error and then not going any further, which could indicate a hardware or software issue preventing start up.

hesthefastest

Computer IS starting up. Only one beep upon startup, as per normal. The second flash shows the normal booting screen. Its not booting twice, but rather the screen is trying to turn on twice. Unfortunately, i have no easy way to test my monitor. I may have an old laptop hiding around here somewhere...

Bowen

If it's an LCD it's probably bad. There's a whole slew of LCDs where the lamp will either die or take forever to warm up. Wait until you think your computer is fully booted and then look really hard at your blank screen, try to see if you can see anything on it.

cmsamo

Have you recently changed your graphics card? I had this exact thing happen to me (monitor would power on, show boot screen, then go black) and after scratching my head for 15 minutes I realized I had connected a 6 block power cable to an 8 block socket on the graphics card (ie card was not getting enough power)

So my bet is maybe your psu is on the way out and it's not powering the gfx card.

A quick test of the monitor on another PC or with a different source would confirm that the monitor was good.

MagicToaster

It could just be the backlight. Shine a flashlight on it and tell us if you see anything on the area you're illuminating. If so, you have a bad backlight.

curly haired boy

also, TONS of LCD monitors aren't broken, they just have a few bad capacitors. you can order a replacement kit off amazon with exactly the components you need for your screen, spend 10 minutes with a soldering iron, and get another 5 years of use.

MagicToaster

How would you know which capacitor is bad?

MechMantis

It's more a case of "replace ALL the capacitors!" rather than "replace ONE OF the capacitors"

Zxerol

curly haired boy wrote: »

also, TONS of LCD monitors aren't broken, they just have a few bad capacitors. you can order a replacement kit off amazon with exactly the components you need for your screen, spend 10 minutes with a soldering iron, and get another 5 years of use.

Exactly what I had to do with my monitor's PSU a few months ago. Taking apart the bezel was more of a hassle than actually desoldering/soldering a few caps (I'm sure there's a couple of retention clips that are flat out busted now, but there you go).

Bowen

MagicToaster wrote: »

How would you know which capacitor is bad?

They typically look like this:



The one on the right is what a "bad" capacitor looks like. They may also have chemical residue on them, like you'd see from an old leaky AA battery.

Tofystedeth

curly haired boy wrote: »

also, TONS of LCD monitors aren't broken, they just have a few bad capacitors. you can order a replacement kit off amazon with exactly the components you need for your screen, spend 10 minutes with a soldering iron, and get another 5 years of use.

This. My previous job had a bunch of Dell monitors that were really nice, but all had some bad capacitors. Apparently there was a rash of this about 10 years ago from some only partially successful industrial espionage. Tons of monitors that were otherwise fine would have problems just like this.