Silverfox

Intel P4 2.4 GHz
Antec 480W P.S.
2 gig pc 2700 Ram
Nvidia 6200 video card


For the past several months i have been experiencing my Gateway 18 FPD monitor simply blacking out during normal use. No gaming, no heat problems, no dust issues, and video card GPU running a normal 38C and CPU 34C.

I have never experienced any graphic artifacting or flickering prior to this occurring.

When the monitor goes blank i have to re-boot to get the monitor to come back ON and it might be fine for 1 day, 2 days, or 10 minutes and it will happen again. Monitor nomal ON green light turns to amber orange the same it does when entering power saving mode.

I have done the below and they have not resolved the issue that occurs randomly for no apparent reason:

1. Switched the VGA cable to the DVI cable.
2. Swapped out my Monitor with my Sons Acer 19".
3. Reseated all boards
4. Ran Chkdsk
5. Ran Memtest

I have been experiencing some USB hub port drop-outs recently also, so could the Intel MB be going bad?

The Nvidia 6200 card is only 6 months old. Could it be the culprit?

I have an almost brand new ATI 850 Pro AGP video card i could swap into the PC but havent tried that yet.

Any suggestions appreciated !

Regards,

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Silverfox

asedsa

Try to search options on monitor menu, and if you have option to select which port to use (DVI or VGA) than select port which you mean to use and disable "auto" option in monitor's menu. Maybe it will help you because monitor will always use port that you selected and avoid port detection.

Good luck.

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Tyrsonswood

Not to make you do extra work, but it would be nice to know if the other video card does the same.......... or even onboard video if it has that.

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EZero

Also another quick test you can try is once the monitor goes black, see if you can make the computer make a sound.

This is to see if your computer is still functional, minus video.

My tip for doing this is if you have a multimedia keyboard, always load up a music player that responds to those keys. (foobar, windows media player etc)

gascieus

I would first try to uninstall and then install a new/current version of nvidia drivers. Also check in device manager to make sure everything is okay (no exclamation marks on the monitor or graphics driver, for instance).

If that checks out, try EZero's method. I can't say for the others, but for foobar2000 you don't even need a multimedia keyboard because you can set up to bind any key to it (t, y, 5, whatever you want). As EZero has said, this is to see if it's strictly a monitor and/or graphics card issue, or if the computer actually froze during this blackout. I would have foobar open at all times, then set up binding key to be global, then set up a play key and a forward key. This will really shed some light on what type of issues you have going on.

comp_ali

I had similar problem with my previous monitor. Try installing another GPU and see. Another suggestion ,somrtimes the capacitors in the monitor board need to discharge but you better give it to the warranty or a professional.

If the problem fixed by installing another gpu , return the other faulty GPU to the resller for warranty replacement or fix.

Silverfox

The monitor is a brand new Acer that my son just purchased and he is using my old one and has not had any problems with it. The monitor itself is not the problem.

Yes the PC is still functional when the black-out occurs.

I though about swapping out the IDE ribbon cable from the MB to the HD`s since they are getting hard and brittle. Been in their since 2002.

The reason i havent swapped the nvidia 6200 with the ATI 850 pro is because i havent seen any visual symptons on the monitor you normally see when a vid card is gong bad. [no artifacting, flickering,etc.,no heat issues] Now if the Antec 480 watt PS is going bad the ATI video card probably requires a little more current to run it versus the Nvidia 6200. If i swap the vid cards and the blackouts occur more frequent then i could possibly suspect the Antec PS.

These random intermittent type problems are a pain to diagnose !

BTW, i have no problems showing in Device manager.

Regards,

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Silverfox

gascieus

Well let's go by this piece by piece.


So it's most likely not a software issue.


It's not a hard drive issue. If the ribbon cable is somehow bad, your computer would not be running. If it's SATA, you can make a case since it's theoretically plug-and-play (not that I would disconnect internal hard drives for fun...). But since you said IDE, that can't be the issue.


I don't think it's a PSU issue in general. If the graphics card is not getting enough current (thus not functioning correctly all the time), Windows should crash your system when the blackout occurs. Since you already "borrowed" his new monitor, can you try using his PSU and test? If still crashing, then use your old PSU and your son's new graphics card. Don't test with your son's PSU and GPU at the same time as that won't isolate the single variable.

It should be a hardware issue at this point. You can always verify it if you got a spare drive/space and just do a quick partition and see if this occurs on a newly installed Windows.

Silverfox

Thanks for the tips !

I do have a spare 120GB WD HD that i leave unhooked in the rig. I disconnected the existing and have hooked-up the spare and the problem still occurred. Did this several weeks back. Sorry i forgot to mention this.

Next time this occurs i will boot-up and emove the nvidia drivers [175.16] and re-boot, run DC & Driver sweeper, shutdown and install the ATI 850 Pro agp card, boot-up and install the current 75mb package of Legacy drivers.

If it still occurs then what else other then the Power Supply could it be other then an intermittent pin connection causing the video signal to drop-out ?

Regards & Thanks for ALL your help !

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Silverfox

Tyrsonswood

If it's not the card then I'd think the card slot....... which means motherboard. When you change the card blow that slot out real well with compressed air just to eliminate the chance of dirt/dust in the slot.

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Silverfox

Thats one of the first things i did. The inside of the case and slots during the reseating of all boards in the MB was my 1st chores several weeks back.

Regards,

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Silverfox