Picked up a cheap monitor, hoping for an easy fix

[Eric Ripley]

I picked up a Samsung SyncMaster 930b at a GoodWill near my home, it seemed in great condition when I picked it up, plugged it in at the store, turned right on, Digital popped up in the corner, I thought everything was fine.
Got home, hooked it up to my laptop through a DVI-HDMI cable, the desktop popped up, for about a second, then the screen went black. Now I can only get anything to display when I press the button to switch between Analog and Digital, it will pop up for a second when it switches to digital but then it shuts off again.
I even tried it on an raspberry pi I have and the same thing happened. Unfortunately though I dont have a VGA cable to see if maybe its just the DVI connection. Any advice from anyone or has anyone experienced this before and is it fixable?

 

[misor]

Some desktop video cards are packaged with dvi to vga adaptor.
see if you have one to test vga video connection.

hooked it up to my laptop through a DVI-HDMI cable

also, I think not all video connections are supported by a dvi-hdmi adaptor (?).
check laptop manual if such connection is supported.

 

[fimbles]

Does the power light change colour or flash when it powers off?

Can you see any faded images on the black screen when it powers itself off?

 

[cliffordcooley]

Check the projection mode and make sure the display port has not been turned off by the OS.

It is also possible the monitor is stuck on the VGA port. I've kinda had this problem before. I thought my DVI port had gone bad but for some reason it was the monitor that switched to VGA. And once I manually made a DVI/VGA toggle, the monitor started working again on the DVI port. Strange I know. And I haven't had the same issue since. Couldn't say what the cause was, and that was several years ago. The monitor is still working, so I doubt that is a sign of failing.