I work at an ISP, and a customer called about 20 minutes ago because she knows that I work on computers. She told me that she moved her PC and when she hooked the monitor back up to the PC she broke a pin on the cable. How in the world she did this I do not know, but she wanted to know if there was anything I could do to fix it without having to replace the monitor.

I told her that there may be some possibilities, but to call Dell first and ask them for some suggestions.

Anyone have any suggestions other than her buying a new monitor? I try my best to save customers money when they ask for my help so my options are either somehow fix the monitor cable or find her a cheap monitor. Hopefully I can figure out a way to fix the cable instead because I would be much more proud of myself

I thought about possibly cutting the monitor cable and then cutting an older monitor cable and attaching those two end's together. I'm sure this is very possible to do, but probably not that easy.

I still for the life of me can't figure out how she broke the durn monitor cable pin. Sheesh.

On the old monitors, they arent attached to the back of the monitor. Just replace the cable. Or if it is a new one, hrmm... err, try to pull it out lol. Possibly take it in for repair?

If the pin is just bent, then you could try and staighten it. Also, not all the pins are used on a monitor cable, so if she is extremely lucky, it might still work without that particular pin. It is also possible to buy a new plug and wire it to the cable.

HD15 VGA Pinout diagram

It's really not that hard to damage a pin on a vga connector. If you're not careful when connecting to the socket and you have misaligned the pins, then they will bend very easily without showing much resistance.

Unfortunately she actually BROKE one of the pins. I took a look at her monitor later today and one of the pins are complete broken off. I just had to think "wow nice job". After speaking with Dell she confirmed that the cable IS able to be removed, you just have to take the back off of the monitor. She also said that her monitor didn't work due to the broken pin (messed up video display).

When she was in the office later on I took a look at the monitor to weigh her options. You would indeed need to remove the back of the monitor to replace the cable, so I told her that before I open the monitor and void the warrant that I wanted her to call Dell or drop by the place she bought the PC from and see if her warranty is still good and if it would cover this kind of problem.

I'm waiting on her to give me a call back and let me know if her warranty will replace the monitor or get it repaired.

If her warranty is no good then my suggestion to her would be to first let me try replacing the cable before buying a new monitor.

I'll update on this later on

It CAN be fixed, whether you will want to try and fix the end or replace the entire cable would be based on your soldering abilities and confidence in doing it. I would opt to replace the end, it isn't that difficult once you have the pin-outs and you don't have to bother opening the monitor up to do it.

Do any of you have a link to a guide of how to repair the cable end?

You might be lucky if, when you open the monitor, you find that the cable plugs onto a Printed Circuit Board inside the monitor. Ask the monitor supplier/maker for a replacement cable. Otherwise cut one off an old monitor (or unsolder it from there) and solder that onto the PCB.