# Monitor about to die?



## Rilvor (Jul 18, 2012)

I'm not entirely certain what's wrong with my computer monitor, if anything at all. Allow me to explain:

Yesterday, I powered my computer up from sleep mode to find that the monitor was not on. I tried turning it on, but nothing. Not even an amber light signifying that it had power but no signal. Eventually after some fiddling I found that unplugging the power cord for 15+ seconds and then plugging it back in, the monitor once again powered on as the blue light came on. While this was happening, I was booting my computer up again. No further problems all day long.

Today, I come once again to fire up the computer from sleep mode, and the monitor was having the same problem. Only this time, no amount of resetting it by taking out the power chord would fix it. It will turn on, then immediately turn off and refuse to turn back on. Unless however, I am at the boot menu, in which case it has no problems. But trying to Start Windows Normally would cause the monitor to completely power off the second it reached the user login screen and revert to the same problem.

Eventually I got Startup Repair at the boot menu and the monitor held out for that. I've since used system restore, but I'm not certain what it might be. It could be that the monitor finally just decided to work again, like yesterday. OR it could be that system restoring fixed it, but I'm not so sure.

Anyone have any idea? It's not a signal issue, if it was I'd be getting the blue light turning amber. What's going on is the monitor is completely and utterly powering itself off and refusing to power up again barring the method with the power chord I described earlier.


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## Lobar (Jul 18, 2012)

Hard to say, but I don't think the monitor's at fault here.  Your monitor shouldn't have that level of awareness of what your computer is doing to be capable of that sort of selective behavior.  My suspicion is that a Windows setting got changed somehow and it didn't want to use your monitor anymore, or it was using a video mode that your monitor didn't support, which was then reverted by the system restore.


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## Rilvor (Jul 18, 2012)

Lobar said:


> Hard to say, but I don't think the monitor's at fault here.  Your monitor shouldn't have that level of awareness of what your computer is doing to be capable of that sort of selective behavior.  My suspicion is that a Windows setting got changed somehow and it didn't want to use your monitor anymore, or it was using a video mode that your monitor didn't support, which was then reverted by the system restore.



See, I would suspect it was a windows setting to blame. My first thought was that the resolution setting had been set to something the monitor was completely incapable of but I can't imagine how that would happen. The whole thing would make a lot more sense if the other day it hadn't started up just fine without any fiddling save for unplugging it and plugging it back in while the computer was booting. I didn't have to system restore yesterday. If it does it again I think I'll plug another monitor into it and see what happens to try and narrow this nonsense down a bit.


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## Arshes Nei (Jul 18, 2012)

I don't think it is the monitor but a system issue or video card driver. In some cases it could be the cable.


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## Elim Garak (Jul 18, 2012)

Most likely its your graphics card, I agree. Might want to try an ubuntu boot CD and run some graphical heavy apps to see if it happens there.
It might be a driver that gets auto updated somehow, try uninstalling all Nvidia/ATI/Intel(VGA/GRAPHICS ONLY) drivers and reinstall them from the website.


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## Rilvor (Jul 18, 2012)

Well, the card itself has no problems when I run intense games on high settings. I'll try to look into that more, though.

I would have thought if it was a driver or the card itself, I would simply have a connection error or the screen off with an amber light rather than the entire piece of equipment being completely powered down. Is this an incorrect perception?

I'm going to look at the drivers for the card and see when they were last updated.

The driver is for an AMD RADEON HD 6450

The Driver Date is 11/23/2010 with version 8.784.1.0

I could have amd.com automatically detect and install, but would that be an ideal thing to try?


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## Arshes Nei (Jul 18, 2012)

Yeah, sometimes your graphics card may have its own power settings. I had to deal with a quadro video card and dual monitors. It was causing issues with the 2nd monitor powering on out of sleep mode (ie it wouldn't power back on). I updated the driver, got some driver software for the brand of monitor and have a lot less issues.


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## Elim Garak (Jul 18, 2012)

Rilvor said:


> Well, the card itself has no problems when I run intense games on high settings. I'll try to look into that more, though.
> 
> I would have thought if it was a driver or the card itself, I would simply have a connection error or the screen off with an amber light rather than the entire piece of equipment being completely powered down. Is this an incorrect perception?
> 
> ...


If you use Second Life get the 12.4 driver, if you don't get 12.6.
Links are for Win7 64bit
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/previous/12/Pages/radeon.aspx?os=Windows%20Vista%20-%2064-Bit%20Edition&rev=12.4
http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon_win7-64.aspx

http://game.amd.com for the other drivers


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## Rilvor (Jul 18, 2012)

Elim Garak said:


> If you use Second Life get the 12.4 driver, if you don't get 12.6.
> Links are for Win7 64bit
> http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/previous/12/Pages/radeon.aspx?os=Windows%20Vista%20-%2064-Bit%20Edition&rev=12.4
> http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon_win7-64.aspx
> ...



Downloading 12.6, thanks a bunch. I'll see what happens and hope it helps. Whatever the outcome is I'll post here.


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## Rilvor (Jul 19, 2012)

So, here's day three and the puzzle gets stranger.

Aside from the driver downloaded by Elim Garak's suggestions, I had made no further changes yesterday. As expected, there were no problems with the monitor losing power. I wanted to try something a bit different, so last night I set my computer to neither go to sleep nor turn off the display. However, before I went to bed I -did- push the power button on the monitor to turn it off.

Upon coming back this morning, I unplugged my headphones to amusingly realize my music was still playing. But that's beside the point, the interesting thing is that I pushed the power button on the monitor. Now my monitor makes a little series of tunes when it turns on, you know what they sound like if you're familiar with LG monitors. It made the expected tune, but did not power on. Either it shut off extremely quickly or never turned on to begin with. But once again we were back to this. I turned the computer off manually, unplugged the monitor once again, and turned the computer on while plugging the monitor back in.

I was able to boot up in Safe Mode with absolutely no trouble, and from there Restart to boot up normally with no trouble.

I am completely baffled, my computer experience while not illiterate is definitely not sufficient enough to have any idea what is going on here. I am describing everything in exacting detail and leaving nothing out, this truly makes no sense to me.

I very much appreciate any and all help people are giving.


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## Elim Garak (Jul 19, 2012)

Ok it makes the tunes, but does it show any logo? Some display logos when starting, either try another monitor or if its supposed to show an LG logo and it doesn't it's the monitor, otherwise it is the graphics card stopping output.
The computer can run with no output, thus the music.


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## Arshes Nei (Jul 19, 2012)

What specific model is your LG monitor?

When you boot it in safe mode it loads the minimal drivers to get your PC going...so this is why most of us are thinking it's a driver conflict.


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## Rilvor (Jul 19, 2012)

Elim Garak said:


> Ok it makes the tunes, but does it show any logo? Some display logos when starting, either try another monitor or if its supposed to show an LG logo and it doesn't it's the monitor, otherwise it is the graphics card stopping output.
> The computer can run with no output, thus the music.


No logo was shown, not even the slightest hint of anything showing on the screen. It literally made the sounds of the monitor starting up and nothing else. If something is running on the assumption that there's a second monitor, I'm not sure why or how the settings were changed to such. I have had this monitor for a number of years now I think, 4 at least. The computer itself I've had since last November and I have never used a different monitor on it. Over the course of my other computers, as well as the 9 months I have had this one I've never encountered this problem.


Arshes Nei said:


> What specific model is your LG monitor?
> 
> When you boot it in safe mode it loads the minimal drivers to get your PC going...so this is why most of us are thinking it's a driver conflict.



It's a model LG Flatron W1952TQ

I'm inclined to agree with you, I just don't have the knowledge of where to start or how to narrow this down a little.

On an off-topic note, of all of the places I've posed the problem this is the only one I've gotten a reply on. How about that!


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## Arshes Nei (Jul 19, 2012)

You are using windows7 or xp?


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## Rilvor (Jul 19, 2012)

Arshes Nei said:


> You are using windows7 or xp?



Win 7


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## Arshes Nei (Jul 19, 2012)

Do you have fortemanager installed for this device btw? I do not know if it's the cause of the conflict.

http://www.lg.com/ca_en/support/pro...ile&searchEngineModelCode=W1952TQ-TF.AUSMAPN#

http://lgknowledgebase.com/kb/index.php?View=entry&EntryID=6414

But as I said before, I had issues with my dual monitors acting up and it took some software from the company that made the monitor to clear up some issues with sleep mode in Windows 7


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## Rilvor (Jul 19, 2012)

Thanks, I'll give it a try and see if it helps, will post results as they come!


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## Rilvor (Jul 20, 2012)

No results as of yet; I will need to learn how to use fortemanager and play around with it to see what I can change.


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## Arshes Nei (Jul 25, 2012)

Were you able to resolve your problem?


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## Rilvor (Jul 25, 2012)

Well, yes and no.

I found the monitor would turn on and go into sleep mode when the computer was powered off, but would immediately shut off permanently if the computer was turned on.

It got to the point where it would not power on at the Boot Menu or Safe Mode either, so I tested my partner's monitor on my computer and it works fine. I tested my monitor on her computer and its the same shenanigans, so I am rather certain the power supply is on the fritz.


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## Arshes Nei (Jul 25, 2012)

I guess it's good to hear the result. I've heard that the power supplies can be fixable though.


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