Monitor flicks off and on. No video unless booted a certain way.

[Saturos]

I started my PC the other day and waited for it to boot up, and there was no video. :O When I checked to make sure the monitor was on, I noticed it was blinking on and off along with the monitor power LED. I had the sound turned up, so I could hear the Windows jingle playing as the OS loaded. So, I turned the PC back off via power key on the keyboard, and again I could hear the Windows jingle as the PC shuts off. As it was shutting down, I could also hear a Windows error jingle (the jingle that plays with a Windows error dialog box) just before the PC cuts off. (I couldn't see what was going on as there was no display)
I normally leave the standby power on the monitor turned on 24/7 so the power LED stays on and the monitor fires up again when the PC has power, but the monitor itself turns off when there's no signal.
So, what I done was turn the monitor completely off, (no standby) and then turned on the PC. I wait until Windows loads, and then turn on the monitor. Viola, there's the picture.
It seems I have to start the PC first and then the monitor now unlike normally. Plus, I have to turn the monitor power completely off and not boot from it's standby state or it won't start with video like it should. I think the monitor standby circuitry is broken or something. I need some opinions on this. What do you guys think?

BTW, my monitor is a ViewSonic 2ms 1280x1024 LCD, and I'm currently using DVI.

Also, my video cards are a pair of SLI 256MB/128MB interface GeForce 7600 GTs.
I don't think it's my video cards though, or I probably wouldn't be typing this right now.
Not a fatal hard drive issue either, otherwise Windows wouldn't boot.

 

[Sedako]

Sounds like the monitor is starting to die. Mine did something very similar before I had to get it replaced. I would first suggest trying it on a different PC and seeing if it exhibits the same issues. If not, then it may very well be a video card issue.

 

[Raziaar]

My computer had similar problems. I was using my computer and oftentimes it would lose its video signal and be unable to recover it until the computer was started, sometimes it would do it even during POST.

It turns out that the problem, at least with my Radeon x1950 was that I had too high of a driver, as the new drivers basically screw my card over, even though it's said they work just fine for x1950 cards. I had to revert to one a bit lower and since then I haven't had a single crash, just like I haven't had any since getting it. It was only after I changed my drivers that it was causing me problems. I had at first thought it was my monitor, and I was worried, but it didn't do it while I was playing xbox or anything, only with my computer.

For your situation, since it is Nvidia, I have no idea.

Maybe you can research your drivers and your card and see if anybody else has had video signal loss problems.

 

[Saturos]

My computer had similar problems. I was using my computer and oftentimes it would lose its video signal and be unable to recover it until the computer was started, sometimes it would do it even during POST.

It turns out that the problem, at least with my Radeon x1950 was that I had too high of a driver, as the new drivers basically screw my card over, even though it's said they work just fine for x1950 cards. I had to revert to one a bit lower and since then I haven't had a single crash, just like I haven't had any since getting it. It was only after I changed my drivers that it was causing me problems. I had at first thought it was my monitor, and I was worried, but it didn't do it while I was playing xbox or anything, only with my computer.

For your situation, since it is Nvidia, I have no idea.

Maybe you can research your drivers and your card and see if anybody else has had video signal loss problems.

I don't think it's the drivers, though I could be wrong. I've been using the Oblivion optimized 84.25 Forceware drivers for several months now as they are the only ones that seem to work correctly with Oblivion. (Yes I'm still playing Oblivion) I haven't had any throuble with them yet if it is indeed the drivers.

Sounds like the monitor is starting to die. Mine did something very similar before I had to get it replaced. I would first suggest trying it on a different PC and seeing if it exhibits the same issues. If not, then it may very well be a video card issue.

I intend to experiment a bit with my sister's PC tomorrow she brought over for me to look at, so I'll try switching both the monitor and PC. (once I solve her PC's issue first that is. Don't want to complicate things further with a PC that's already broken. She's paying me $150 btw. )

I hope it's not the monitor thought. I won't be able to afford a new one atm.

 

[Raziaar]

I don't think it's the drivers, though I could be wrong. I've been using the Oblivion optimized 84.25 Forceware drivers for several months now as they are the only ones that seem to work correctly with Oblivion. (Yes I'm still playing Oblivion) I haven't had any throuble with them yet if it is indeed the drivers.

Man, I really want to play Oblivion again. It's hard for me to get back into a game I stopped playing for a while, and it's been forever since I last played Oblivion. I had to stop playing it due to my radeon 9800 pro fan dying in the past, and I waited for a new heatsink for it. I never touched it since.

 

[Sedako]

What problems are you having with recent drivers and Oblivion?

 

[Saturos]

What problems are you having with recent drivers and Oblivion?

Antialiasing-artifacting (A HL2 problem too, but at least Nvidia fixed the f**king problem for Oblivion), and some problems with the way water/window reflections are rendered.
Also, these drivers have seemed to improve the general performance over the later drivers considerably.

With the 163.71 Forceware drivers I got around 9FPS outdoors/36FPS indoors. (which is unplayable)

With the Oblivion optimized 84.25 drivers and some .ini tweaking, I got around 25FPS outdoors/55FPS indoors.

Later drivers != always equal better.

 

[Saturos]

I ran Chkdsk to sure. Is it possible that a bad boot sector of the HD could cause the problem I was having?

 

[Sedako]

Well, the reason I ask is because I never had any problems running oblivion on newer drivers, although it may have something to do with your SLI setup.

 

[Saturos]

Well, the reason I ask is because I never had any problems running oblivion on newer drivers, although it may have something to do with your SLI setup.

You may be right there too. It's possible that the SLI bridge is going bad.

Problem is though is that it would be kinda hard to check because the issue seems to happen intermittently. In other words, now it seems I can't just reproduce the error at will.

 

[Raziaar]

Man... the problem I described earlier is cropping up again.

<sighs>

This drives me to madness.

Funny thing is, I see this a lot with people who either have Viewsonic monitors, or ATI x1950 cards.

Computer running... watching a video with audio. Monitor flicks off... seconds later audio flicks off. Can't recover anytime. Reset computer... sometimes monitor doesn't recover... have to reset 5-20 times... sometimes waiting a lot inbetween... Turns on... works well for a little while... randomly shuts off again. Rinse and repeat.

In summer months, it seems to happen more often. In winter months not so much.

My video card temps are absolutely fine and cool.


Hey you know what... my brother recently got an LCD. He's no longer using his CRT. I might try that to rule out the case of it being my monitor that is dying. Could very well be. We'll see.

I would be so thrilled if that's the case, but i do ultimately believe it's my video card... since it doesn't do it with my geforce 3 or my brother's nvidia card.

Maybe it could be the fact that my video card has DVI slots... and my geforce 3 and my brother's nvidia are both still VGA.

I also often notice the fact that my monitor has a lot of... signal loss, signal back on, black screen, screen on when it's doing graphical changes and shit or booting up the operating system.

Very unusual.

I read a lot about people saying to change from digital to analog mode. How is that done? Is that only possible for LCD monitors? Mine is CRT. A viewsonic A90f+


EDIT: Nothing... switching to a different monitor didn't fix things. <sigh> So it's gotta be the video card.