Help My Monitor Won’t Come On Part 2
By ryan ~ May 29th, 2008. Filed under: pc help.
Since writing the first article, about the computer monitor not coming on with the computer, I have come to the realization that the problem with RAM is not ALWAYS the solution (although in my experience it is about 90% of the time). The problems associated with the monitor not coming on could be numerous, so I’ll just go over a couple of them here.
First, it could be your video card. If you have a video card AND on-board graphics the try switching to your onboard graphics to see if your monitor will come on. The problem may be the video is NOT going through your card at all! Simply switch your video cable to the on-board socket (VGA or DVI). Another thing to try is to simply remove your video card and then boot up the computer. The on-board video should be the default video output when your third-party card is removed. If that solves the problem then you know something is most likely wrong with your video card.
(Note: Be sure to check your BIOS settings to make sure that the computer is trying to “see” the AGP, PCI or PCI-Express slot for video output and it’s NOT set to on-board video ONLY)
If you don’t have a video card, or you know that the video card is working properly then there are some more things you can try, like checking your hard drive. Yes, a bad hard drive can wreak havoc on a computer system, especially if it’s “shorting out”. The easiest way to check is to simply remove the hard drive and boot up the computer. The monitor should still come on to give your the “operating system not found” screen. Of course if you now see this screen then the monitor came on and there’s something wrong with your hard drive. I suggest getting a new one, IMMEDIATELY!
Now that you know that a bad hard drive can ruin a system, you should imply that other cards and adapters can as well. If you unplugged the hard drive and still have nothing, then you should begin to take out other non-essential items such as sound cards and USB cards and SATA cards, basically all PCI cards! You can even unplug your CD or DVD drives and floppy drives in order to strip it down the bare essentials; power supply, motherboard and video card. If you have your computer stripped down to those three things (or two, if your don’t have a video card) and the monitor still won’t come on then there’s only one thing left to try, a new power supply.
If you can get your hands on a friends power supply then you can check it yourself, otherwise you may need to bring it in to a computer repair shop and have it tested. Most shops have a small tool that they use to see if a PSU is good or not. If you find out that the power supply is, in fact, good then you know what the problem is, right? Yes, find yourself a new motherboard. If your computer is a few years old then this might be a good opportunity to upgrade with a new motherboard, processor and RAM, especially if you have a board with a socket that is no longer being made or hard to find.