Lenovo Monitor stuck on power saving mode

[dimitraevm]

Hello, I just bought the following:
Lenovo ThinkStation P310 desktop tower, keyboard, and mouse
Lenovo ThinkVision T2424pA

After connecting everything according to the instructions of both the tower and the monitor, double & triple checking that all parts are connected properly, here's what happened...

Tower seems to boot up fine, disc drive in tower opens and closes properly, keyboard and mouse both detected. However...

Monitor seems stuck at power saving mode. Two things are connected:
blue VGA connector with pins on both sides is connected to VGA connector in back of tower.
power cord

When the on/off button on the screen is pressed, the light turns green, the screen shows the Lenovo logo, then the light turns orange-ish and message 'power saving mode' is displayed as if the tower is not working.

I have tested the monitor on my Toshiba Satellite laptop and even though the same thing happened at first, after 3-4 tries the monitor finally worked. I used an HDMI cable to do that as there is no VGA port on the laptop. I didn't need to disconnect and reconnect any cables, just turning the screen on and off again and again till it worked.

There is no HDMI port on the back of the tower unfortunately so I couldn't test that even if I wanted. I really hope there is an easy fix for this as I need to get it working asap...

Thanks a lot

 

[Leeky]

The monitor isn't sensing any video output from the VGA connector on the tower. Do you have more than one VGA connector?

It would be lower down the case, poking through the slots, like here:

Computers with dedicated Graphics Cards like the one in the picture above won't receive any video output from the on-board VGA near the top of the case because BIOS disables that and will use the dedicated GPU by default.

 

[dimitraevm]

Okay, it looks like this, from what I can see, no second VGA...
A friend suggested I buy an HDMI-DVI adapter and see if that works.

 

[Leeky]

You have a dedicated GPU installed.

See the white connector below the audio ports (pink, green, blue round ports) - that's a DVI connector. Hard to make out what's to the right of it, but it's either DisplayPort or HDMI.

If you're using VGA you need to buy a DVI-to-VGA adapter. They look like this:

The VGA connector you have been using will not work if you have a separate video card installed and BIOS will disable it at boot time. You need to connect your monitor to the DVI or DP/HDMI connector lower down the case.

EDIT: It looks like your monitor supports HDMI and DisplayPort. Identify which connector is to the right of the DVI connector. Below identifies the different ports and what they look like:

IF you can't work out which one you need, you should be safe ordering a HDMI to DisplayPort cable as your monitor appears to support both types and your GPU supports one or the other. Just fit it to your tower first and then the other end to the corresponding adapater.

Other than theVGA lead and power cable, did the monitor come with any other cables?

 

[dimitraevm]

Ok thank you!

 

[Leeky]

No problem at all.