Ok then…
I went out a few days ago and bought myself a wonderful new desk set (desk, add-on top piece, and drawer unit) from IKEA - man, I love that place. Today I carefully unplugged my precious computer, set it aside, and tossed the old desk. I set up the new desk and rehooked up my computer. As a formality I decide to start her up and make sure she works. It’s a no-go from the monitor gods. It seems like my monitor just doesn’t want to accept the fact that it is indeed plugged into a tower. All it has on it is the dreaded “No Signal” box for a second or two, then it fades to black and goes into power save mode.
The monitor is plugged in to the tower and a power source, so I know that’s not it. The only out of the ordinary thing I did was to spray that air in a can this stuff into the fan opening whilst dusting off the rest of my computer equipment.
I have no clue what this could be. Please help!!! My elation over getting a brand new desk is being crushed by my dead monitor!
When you turn your computer on, do you hear just one short beep as it starts up, or some combination of long and short beeps? If the latter, you may have dislodged your video card. Open the case, pull the card and then reseat it firmly; be sure to screw the backplate to the chassis tightly. Of course, this is all moot if you have an integrated onboard video adaptor–though the POST beeps may still be instructive.
Are you getting fan sounds? Can you feel air blowing out the PS fan in the rear? Are the drives trying to spin up? If you feel comfortable doing so, you might want to take the case off and check to see that all the connectors are plugged in firmly–pull off each and reseat it to be sure. Look to see if the processor chip is well seated in it’s socket (or slot as the case may be). Is the processor heat sink fan running when you turn it on? Do you see any lights on the mainboard or front panel coming on?
Here is something that has screwed me many times as an IT professional and even a couple of people on these boards have fallen for it.
Sometimes, there are two ports on a computer that look and act like monitor ports. I believe one is the regular one and one is a video card. See if there is another one in a different location and try it.
I opened up the side panel and took a look around. Everything looked okay to me. Okay meaning the fans went on when I started it up again and nothing was obviously loose. I know virtually nothing about the insides of a computer, so I’m terrified of touching much inside it.
When I turned it off (by holding in the power button), it did beep once, if that matters any.
I thought I had to unplug something inside the tower.
Thanks, Shagnasty, it worked. Woo hoo!!
I had done exactly as you said and plugged it into the wrong port. I tried plugging it into the regular port, but needed to plug it into my video card port.
Thanks again for the help, everybody.
I would feel smug except I fell for the same thing myself at work a couple of months ago (just for a minute) after telling other people what the problem was for a few years. It is sneaky and sinister like The Clap I tell ya.
