Topic: Dead Monitor

[Simon]

I was asked to have a look at a neighbours PC this morning.  The PC powers up, and (apparently) boots up OK, with a nice reassuring single bleep, but although there is power to the monitor, and it comes out of standby, the screen is completely blank.  No BIOS screen, no nothing.  It was all working OK on Thursday evening, but when they switched it on again last night, this was the result.

This is a fairly low spec, 5 year old machine, and all I know is that it has W98 on it, and a PCI graphics card, which I fitted myself last year (as there is no AGP slot), which has been working fine.

I think the monitor has snuffed it, but does anyone have any other ideas?  I intend to try the machine on my monitor, but I thought I'd ask here before I go to the trouble of dismantling things.

[Dack]

Typical problems I've found for no picture:

Monitor dead - try on a different computer to confirm
Graphics card dead - (unlikely as monitor comes out of standby) try a different monitor.
Refresh rate set too high by someone experimenting with the settings - try booting up in safe mode and seeing if you get a picture.

[Simon]

I would bet on the first option - I'll keep you posted.  Might pop round there later and see if my monitor works.

[joudi]

Let them install Mozilla Simon, it might cure it.            

[Clive]

:funny:  Good thinking Joudi.

[Lona]

That Red Lizard is popping up all over the place. I think he is a pet of Simons.

[Simon]

OK, an update.  The PC works fine on my monitor, so it seems obvious that theirs has died.  What a horrible machine though!  I've just spent two hours clearing out 5 years of crap!  They haven't cleared their Cache or Cookies for years (took a good 5 minutes just to clear the cache!), they have Norton AV installed, but it hadn't been updated for ages.  They have Ad Aware, but the old version, so I put the new version on, and ran it, and it found no less than 313 pieces of spyware!  I then went to Windows Update and there were 16 Critical Updates waiting, going back to 1999.  Got all of them, including IE6, as IE5 was still on there, but it didn't take too long as I had used my BB connection.  This is Win98SE, by the way.

The thing is dying on it's feet from being overloaded with games.  Why do kids have to have 6 or 7 games installed at once?  The hard drive is only small, and currently there is only about 100Mb of space left on it.  I was going to give them a Firewall, but that would probably have just finished it off.

Anyway, they're off to buy a new monitor, and I will soon be expressing the virtues of letting me build them a nice new machine.  

[Clive]

Well done Simon!  Sounds a bit like the Caped Crusader to the rescue.    

[Tony]

Just watch the ungratefull so and so's come back with a brand new PC