Pls. Help! Video signal not reaching my monitor

[jcarre]

I have a Dell M992 monitor with a P4 3.0ghz Dell Dimension XPS system.
I am having problems just about everyday, randomly, my screen turns
black yet the power on my system is still running and my monitor is
not turned off either?? You can tell because the little light on the
monitor is flicking on and off. I try turning on and off my monitor
with no results.

I would appreciate anyone's help in the matter.
Thanks in advance.

 

[Steve Reeves]

Hi there,

Had a similar problem myself the other day (random VGA signal loss -
definitely not the monitors as I have 2 and it affected both of them).

Thought it was heat at first, added major cooling by means of a fan - no
joy. Dodgy video card maybe, swapped it out with a spare - still same
issue. Weird. I ended up taking out all the cards, the RAM and so on
before re-seating them (after fully dusting the insides with an air
blower) and the problem has gone away. Don't know why this worked - I
was beginning to suspect (despite the fact the PC ran ok otherwise) the
power supply to the AGP port or a broken motherboard but it has been
fine since so likely nothing major.

I too posted to a forum (2 in fact) but nobody was able to provide any
guidance. I am mystified though as I don't understand why my actions
would fix the problem. If you get any further info or enlightenment I
would be really grateful if you could post or email it to me so I can
diagnose better next time.

Hope that helps a bit.

Steve

 

[Andy]

Hi there,

Had a similar problem myself the other day (random VGA signal loss -
definitely not the monitors as I have 2 and it affected both of them).

Thought it was heat at first, added major cooling by means of a fan - no
joy. Dodgy video card maybe, swapped it out with a spare - still same
issue. Weird. I ended up taking out all the cards, the RAM and so on
before re-seating them (after fully dusting the insides with an air
blower) and the problem has gone away. Don't know why this worked - I
was beginning to suspect (despite the fact the PC ran ok otherwise) the
power supply to the AGP port or a broken motherboard but it has been
fine since so likely nothing major.

I too posted to a forum (2 in fact) but nobody was able to provide any
guidance. I am mystified though as I don't understand why my actions
would fix the problem. If you get any further info or enlightenment I
would be really grateful if you could post or email it to me so I can
diagnose better next time.

Hope that helps a bit.

Steve

-------------------------
I had a similar problem the other month on a Win98 system (5 years
old). The screen worked fine until certain websites where visited when
the screen would go black. Same sites each time.

I finally solved it by installing DirectX 8!

Hope this helps.