Monitor loses signal recently

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mikelantel

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I'm hoping someone has an idea what my problem is as I've seen this problem on other forums so maybe I can help someone else.

I've had an AMD Athlon 2800 + Asus A7n8x-e motherboard setup for about two years now that was running windows 2000 with a geforce 4 graphics card and a gig of ram. 430 watt power supply. A few months ago I bought a copy of XP and upgraded. Still, several months of smooth sailing and lots of World of Warcraft playing. About two weeks ago the monitor started losing the signal. I would start the computer and right after xp was going to load and have me log in the monitor would go to standby, as if it lost the signal. Over the course of two weeks it started happening more often. Sometimes I could get logged in and have a whole day of usage out of the computer including playing games or other times I'd have to reset it fifteen times before it would let me use it for hours. Over the last couple of days the loss of signal began happening while playing games, or web browsing. A little more random than at the xp startup point. I swapped monitors, bought a new graphics card and I'm still dealing with the issue. Today I was getting a one in ten chance that the computer would get to windows without losing the monitor signal. Then, cross my fingers, would get some gaming time. Today I gave up and waited for my new vid card to show up. After installing the Geforce 6800gs, and reinstalling drivers for the MBoard, direct x, vid card, bios, nforce drivers, it still randomly resets. Very often when switching to a game, and after a couple of minutes of desktop/web browsing.
Because this problem has gotten worse over time I'm assuming some hardware has degraded in my system. I had plenty of time with win 2000 and several months with xp with no problems. I'm now looking at replacing my cpu/motherboard and power supply as that's all I have left to replace.

Oh, two other oddities. Twice during my restarting to get it to work the computer would not only lose the monitor signal but would shut down and restart at the same time. Only happened twice but makes me think something weird is going on. I also noticed that when the monitor loses the signal I hear the harddrive turn off and the cpu working light goes on full time. Not sure if that was happening all the time. Earlier it seemed the computer was running, but I'd lost the signal. Sign of things getting worse? Other thing I noted is that the vid card I got requires a 300 watt power supply. I have a 430. I had to unplug two hard drives and two fans from the power supply to get the computer to boot properly. It kept failing around the xp time to boot. I'm assuming I need a bigger power supply?

Any thoughts appreciated. I'm gonna talk to my more tech savvy buddies at work. Would be nice to nail this down to one component. I'm assuming it's hardware failing since I got so much time out of the setup for so long.
 
I also noticed that when the monitor loses the signal I hear the harddrive turn off and the cpu working light goes on full time

Yes you need a bigger and better PSU. 430W is never a full 430, it's more like 300 with the generic/cheapys. It's prob 2 yrs old too and ready to die. Replace it before you damage your new 6800GT.

You said you had to unplug 2 fans to get it to boot, that says it all right there.

Cheers,
 
So you're assuming it's been the power supply going bad that was causing the monitor to lose it's signal before I put in the new graphics card? I'm pretty sure also I need a new power supply for the new card but I'd like to attempt to determine it's the power supply all along. Remember things were working fine up until recently when I'd lose the signal to the monitor. Also, any recommends for a good power supply and wattage?
 
antec would be a great place to start they have true rated power supplies.. you get what you pay for that is for sure... http://www.antec.com... i am just as sure as the other guys are that they power supply was the culprit here... good luck mate
 
Yes that's exactly what I mean, the dieing PSU was under powering the old video card too and you started getting intermittant video output.

A bad PSU can cause all sorts of probs and simulate every hardware failure you can imagine. I agree with OpTi, Antec is very good, so are OCZ.
Invest in a good PSU now and you'll have trouble free computing/gaming for years.

Cheers
 
I'm having the same problems as the original poster. I also have a geforce 6800 gt. But my problems just started yesterday when I hooked up a new LCD monitor through the DVI connection. I used to have a crt or ctr (a regular big heavy monitor) hooked up through the reg connector to my video card. Everything was fine with that setup. Now I get random lockups and "no signal" messages and I have to reboot. My question is, does an LCD or the DVI draw more power than the old setup and could that be my problem? Might I need a new PSU like what is being suggested for the original poster?

Sorry I can't give more info about my system but I'm not a computer wiz and I'm at work and don't have the info handy.
 
DVI should be the better connection for the lcd... try using the other plug where your old crt used to go (may need to use some kind of VGA>DVI adapter or something) and see if it works, otherwise take the lcd back to the shops or to another comp and see if it works properly to start off with..
and word of advice for people planning to use the power output for monitors from their psu's.. never mix with crt.. they drain teh thing dry.. lcds ok..
 
I'm gonna pickup a new DVI connector on the way home today. Hopfully that will do the trick. If not, this would be the third time someone has suggested a bad PSU for various monitor problems on this board. I'll also try hooking up the reg connection and see what that does and checkin the monitor on another computer before I get to the power supply. Thx for the tips. I'll give an update later on...if I can use my computer that is. ;)
 
I would try hooking the LCD up to the regular VGA video output port on the 6800GT first (as was suggested above). The DVI won't require more power but maybe it draws on another function of the video drivers, so I would suggest you have the latest drivers and mobo chipset drivers too.

What PSU do you have and the max power btw?
 
Picked up a new DVI cable on my way home from work and that didn't solve the problem. I had tried to get a driver for the LCD monitor when all of this first started (one didn't come with the monitor and they didn't have one on the manuf website. It's a Benq fp91g+ monitor btw). So I let windows search for one today and it came up with it. I've been running good for 7 hrs now. 3 times longer than I have since I first hooked the monitor up. Hopfully this cleared everything up. If not, I'll post an update and start from the begining and eliminate what it could be.

BTW, I'm running with

Soltek sl-k8an2-gr MB
Asus Geforce 6800GT 256mb
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
Gig of ram (not sure of make and speed)
AMD Athlon +3200
480w Altec PSU

Thanks to all who posted and I hope I don't have to come back (to this thread anyway) to find more help. :bounce:
 
Well that didn't last long. Ran for 8 hrs plus fine after I got the monitor driver but sometime during the night it locked up again. Back to the drawing board.
 
You're sure that card is not OCed? Did you check the clocks in the ATI toolbox? I OC my 6600GT a little from 500/1000 to 570/1100, but if I go to 580/1125 she'll start to lock-up/hang. She'll run for an hour or so then the heat gets to her and it's a hard reboot and I bring the clocks down.
 
An update on my end. After I thought I fixed it with the Monitor drivers and locked up once again, I eventually got back into windows and ran my machine for 3 days with no problems. Then last night it locked up again. Went and got a new PSU, but before I installed it I went through my Device Manager one last time. I discovered that I had a new device trying to be installed and there was a problem with it. Now, I know this wasn't there for the past week since all this nonsense started. It was in the "other" catagory and listed as a "multimedia audio device". I haven't done anything hardware related to try to fix this (I was about to put the new PSU in and maybe try my old chaintech 5500fx video card to rule them out). So I tried to disable it since I didn't know what it was and it wasn't working properly anyway and the compy locked up. Got me thinking that this might have been the root of all my problems. When I got back in, I had windows search for a driver on the internet and magically, it found one! Turns out to be an Nvidia Audio Device? No idea where it came from and no idea what it does. Rebooted and it worked all last night and as far as I know all today (we'll see when I get home).

Does anyone know if this
1. Could have been the problem the whole time?
2. What it does?
3. Why it just showed up out of the blue?

Sorry to be so chatty but work is almost over and I'm done with what I need to do :p

I still have the PSU and video card in waiting incase this wasn't the fix. And no, I don't overclock my videocard. And all of the temps for my system are well below crit levels.

Thx for any help you guys can give.
 
Did the Nvidia video driver you updated come with some sort of multimedia bundle? Multimedia auto driver is like CreativeLabs and come with your mobo. I'm not familiar with your Soltek sl-k8an2-gr. But if it's working leave it alone.

I'd suggest installing the new PSU and leaving the 6800Gt in, no sense opening the can of worms of switching video drivers etc to go back to your 5500fx.

My bet is that with the new PSU and updated drivers for the 6800GT and this audio driver thing fixed you won't see any more hangs.

Keeps us posted.

cheers.
 
Turned out to be the video card. I swapped it out with a 5500fx and it's been working fine for 5 days now. I started to get serious problems with the old card while booting windows and when I did get in opening WoW would lock up almost everytime. Card working great with the vga port for over a yr but when I tried to use the DVI, something musta blew. I wasn't even able to go back to using the vga port again. I'm glad I finally figured it out but now I have to go drop more money for a new video card cause the 5500fx can't keep up with WoW.

Thanks to everyone for all the help and suggestions during my posts.

Mike
 
Hardware Newbie

Team,

Thanks for all the info.

I just picked this thread up as I have the same issue but with a twist. My desktop PC has been running without a monitor for a couple of months, I have just been remote desktopping to it without a problem.

I decided today that I wanted to put my Sony LCD directly connected to the PC so I could play around a bit. The PC would boot and stay up and running. I could remote into the PC and do anything I wanted but the direct connected LCD would lose the signal. I even tried a different LCD and got the exact same behaviour.

Now I have read and understood all of the posts above regarding PSU's and possibly even the video card being at fault but I am not certain that one or both of these things is at fault because before remoting into the PC I used an LCD without issue. Can anyone suggest anything to isolate the cause of the problem I am having?

I would really appreciate it.

Thanks.

brettm
 
well using basic troubleshooting,
-did you try cleaning up the pc case and (if any)dust on the vga/dvi connectors?
-drivers/directx update?
-swap monitor other pc, vid card other pc vice versa etc...

if you did add some new hardware to the machine tehn maybe teh psu could be overloaded.. unless the psu is a noname brand one, which in that case may possibly be the fault (just read through some of the threads regarding psu's you see what i mean).. download apps like everest or something.. and run that and goto sensors and check voltages to get a better idea of things..

that should get things started.. if you still have trouble, post us the system specs and any additional info (recent changes etc) related/not related to it..
 
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