Defective Monitor or Video Card?

Question

For the past several weeks, the display on my comp has been really flaky.  To be specific, it won't come on immediately when I turn on the comp.  I have to do repeated restarts to finally get it and then it only comes on in Safe mode.  If I then do another restart from Safe mode, I can get it back into Normal mode.  Once I finally get it on (in either Safe or Normal modes), everything works fine except for one game (Total War Attila) which may be a totally separate issue.

When I say it won't come on, what I mean is I hear the start-up sound effects at the usual time interval but the monitor remains dark.

Due to my living situation, it will be a big deal to cart the comp out to a repair shop so I'd like to avoid that if it turns out the real issue is I need a new monitor.  Any advice is appreciated.  Technical info follows:

My monitor is a ten-yr-old AOC, model 919Swa1, Resolution 1280 x 1024 x 60,

My video card is a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti, bits/pixel 32

My hard-drive is Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Extreme CPU X9770 with an X64-based PC

My operating system is Windows 7 Home Premium with Service Pack 1

? · Accepted Answer

I would suspect the video card since it seems to have other issues. But a 10 year old monitor is pretty old and likely to start failing by now too.

So use the standard process or elimination. Test the monitor on another computer and see if it has the same issues. And/or take another monitor and test it on your computer to see if it is having the same problems. That is usually the fastest and easiest way to narrow down a problem.

Mark · Answer

1st off you don't get a no signal notice on the monitor screen right? ok next time it gos dark take a flash light and place it near the screen and see if you can make out the desktop login lock screen from the light from the flash light, if you can the monitor is bad and needs to be replaced.

Defective Monitor or Video Card?

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