HELP! Why would one monitor keep shutting down to standby, and the other one, not?

Factual Questions
1

I’ll tell you right away–if you came into this thread to tell me, “Right-click the mouse on the Desktop and a menu called Properties will come up…” then this thread is not for you. We are WAYYYY beyond that, in the continuing saga of Duck Duck Goose and the Monitor from Hell.

It’s been two months now.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=48011

The story so far: Windows 95 with an Acer 486. The monitor (an Aspire that came with the computer in 1996) keeps going into orange flashing light Standby Mode at the most inconvenient times, and takes longer and longer to come back. No, it’s not set in Properties to do that, that was the first thing I thought of.

We thought it was the power cord, that connects the monitor to the power strip, because for a while, it would fix itself if you wiggled the connection in the back of the monitor. We thought it was a short or something. In the linked thread, there was some discussion of how to repair monitors.

The Better Half sprayed some of that silicone lubricant stuff into the plug outlet and announced that that had fixed it.

So, as a test, I hooked up the newer, malfunctioning monitor to the old Windows 3.1 computer in the living room, and hooked up the original equipment Windows 3.1 computer’s monitor (a Pionex Super VGA 1024 non-interlaced) to the new computer in the dining room (the one we actually use). For two months now, we’ve been turning on the old computer in the living room, with the new Aspire monitor connected to it, letting the monitor run (we also have old games installed on there that La Principessa likes to play) and it has NOT been shutting itself down to standby. We’ve been watching.

And the old monitor that’s hooked up to the everyday Acer computer has not been shutting itself down, either. It’s been good as gold, for two months now.

So we miss having the speakers, because it’s no fun to play Duke Nukem in silence. This old monitor has tiny little transistor radio speakers :rolleyes: that have to be plugged in separately, that hardly do the Duke justice.

So after two months I swap monitors. Yesterday morning. Five minutes after I hook up the new monitor, it’s in standby mode. After a minute or two it comes back. Business as usual the rest of the day.

I find myself wondering whether it’s a malfunction in the ON/OFF button, not the power cord (in spite of the fact that it’s been turned on and off for two months now in the living room with no problems–I’m getting desperate). I put a band-aid over the button and tell everyone, “Let’s leave it permanently on, and when you shut the computer off, it’ll just go into Standby mode.”

So the monitor spends the night last night in Standby mode, I turn it on this morning, and five minutes later, it goes BACK into Standby mode, only this time it doesn’t come back up. At all.

So: is it a malfunction in the ON/OFF button? We turned it on and off in the living room for two months with no problems. Was it traumatized by having to spend the night in Standby mode, and it burned something out?

Or could this be a software problem? Is there some reason why this monitor, when connected to Win95, would think that it has to go into Standby mode every so often, but when connected to Windows 3.1, it wouldn’t?

I still don’t have 200 bucks for a new monitor, but we sure do miss having the sound effects. And it’s driving me nuts.
:mad:

2

After reading the other thread and this one, I believe it’s either a problem with the switch inside the monitor going bad or the video cable to the PC is bad. Both can cause shaky monitor performance. Sorry to say this kind of stuff happens even on ‘new’ monitors. As mentioned previously, you shouldn’t play around with your monitor - you may fall down and go boom. Try eBay for a used monitor $50.

3

Unfortunately, it sounds like it’s time for a new monitor. It could be a short or a loose wire inside the SVGA cable (do you have one that’s interchangeable? can it be removed without cutting?), or it could be damaged circuitry inside. Has anything ever (not recently, EVER) been spilled inside it?

It sounds like your monitor is losing the video signal, and I think a bad cable is more likely. But it’s a pain to install a new one, not to mention unsafe since there is a danger of shocks upwards of 10,000 volts, even if the power is unplugged (capacitors suck). Unless it’s a removable cable.

If you decide to go with a new one, you can get used ones really really cheap at http://www.pricewatch.com (you won’t see captain kirk, it’s price WATCH, not price LINE)

4

I’m going to have to disagree with the consensus that it’s time for a new monitor. It really seems like a software issue to me.

Is it the exact same amount of time everytime? Is it exactly 5 minutes or in the neighborhood?

Silly question but did you check the power settings in the BIOS as well?

How 'bout leaving the newer monitor on the newer machine at a DOS prompt for a while? does it go to sleep there as well?

5

When it was doing it before, last fall, it was completely unpredictable. Days would go by when nothing would happen, and then it started getting worse, but still completely unpredictable. At any time during your computer session, it would go into Standby, and come back after varying periods of time, anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes.

The last couple of days, it was “kind of” 5 minutes after being turned on, both times.

The “SVGA cable” is the thing that connects the monitor to the computer, right? No, as far as I can tell, it’s permanently attached to the back of the monitor.

Dunno how to check power settings in BIOS. The suggestion about letting it sit at the DOS prompt is interesting, except for one thing–HOW DO I POST WHILE I’M IN DOS??

[goes into immediate SDMB withdrawal at the thought]