Urgent help needed, monitor in stanby and can’t access my PC!

Well I was working on my computer just now when it suddenly went off and rebooted itself. But when it rebooted the monitor will only go into standby so I can’t do anything. I’ve tried a few times and occasionally the manufacturer logo pops up but then the monitor goes back into sleep mode.

I need help with this quick as I have something I need to finish!

Thanks

Not that I will be able to answer your dilemma, but you need to post the statistics for your PC for anyone to help...

Make
Model
Do you have a Graphics Card or do you use "On Board" Graphics
Operating System

Semper

No idea! Got it off my brother in law with not much idea of the specs. All in know is it’s running XP SP2 and its an emachine. I’m fairly sure it has an dedicated graphics card.

The monitor is I think a goodmans something or other LCD.

First thing you should do is look on the back and see if you have more than one monitor connector..

If you have a graphics card, it will be at the bottom and there will be another one toward the middle.

If so, try plugging into the other one and restarting.

If you have or can get another monitor, try plugging it in.

If not, I would unplug your monitor, turn the machine off and restart without a monitor, then plug it in and see if the machine picks it up.

Other than that, maybe one of the PC Guru's will hop on here..

Semper

First guess would be a bad monitor. It sounds like your backlight or inverter circuitry is defective. Sometimes, turning it off and on several times will recover, but not always.

As semper said, try another monitor.

Thanks, turned out to be the graphics card. Had to remove that that before using the monitor through the motherboard connection. Graphics are practically none existent but at least I can find my way around the screen.

Sounds like you are using the integrated graphics card. You may be able to at least make that look better, by checking to make sure you have the driver installed for it. Right click "My computer," click "properties," click the "hardware" tab, click "Device manager," then see if you have any yellow exclamation marks beside anything, like on "Display adapters." This is for Windows XP.

Just look up the manufacture site or motherboard manufacturer site and find the video driver for that model, if you are lacking it.

If you have the driver, you may be able to make it look better by adjusting the resolution, and monitor refresh rate settings. Refresh rate settings apply more to CRT montitors, not so much LCD. Just don't adjust it further than what the monitor says it is capable of.

You may also find the the graphics card will work now if you put it back in. Clean out the case and clean off the card, if things are dirty, then re-insert the card. Connection points can become dirty and not make good contact. Re-inserting could fix the problem.

Troy

Thanks I dug out the driver disk and it's looking ok now.

I think the problem might have been caused by a power surge which we've been having, cleaning it doesn't seem to have worked.

So, I guess the graphics card is dead? Luckily, these days, they are cheap for a pretty good one.

Troy