[JamesBJames]

Hello everyone.

First off, I apologize if this is the wrong forum to post this problem. Although the problem is hardware related, I'm not sure if it ties in at all with my Windows XP OS or not. Anyways...

I have a problem with my monitor that I can't seem to be able to fix. It worked fine as of about seven hours ago, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. I'll detail as much as I can below about what I've tried.

I restarted my computer at around 5:00 PM, went somewhere, and got home around 7:00 PM. When I turned my computer on, the problem reared its ugly head. It seemed that after a random amount of time, my monitor would black out (but not completely lose power - the light on it stayed on regardless of what the screen showed). If I tried to turn the monitor back on by hitting the button on the monitor itself, I would be able to see my screen again, but only for about three seconds before it blacked out again. The only way to temporarily fix the problem was to restart the computer and go back to stage 1.

I tried googling to see if any other people had the same problem I had. There were a few responses, so I gave them a shot.

- First: I did what anyone probably would do first: checked all the cables leading out of the monitor. They seemed perfectly fine (and they still do now), so the problem probably didn't lie there.
- Second: Some people had said that the problem was that their surge protector was acting up, so that was what I attempted to fix first: I got a different, somewhat newer surge protector that I knew worked and attempted to see if it would fix the monitor black out problem. It didn't.
- Third: One person said that there was a lot of 'gunk' on the outside of his computer that may have caused it to overheat and mess with the monitor. I cleaned the outside of my computer, but again, my monitor blacked out after about half an hour.
- Fourth: Thinking that the problem was a software issue (it seemed weird that my computer was working fine until I restarted it), I went through all my old drivers and updated them to their newest versions. It took a while, but I somehow found an update for my ancient MSI RADEON XPRESS 200 SERIES display driver. Still, though, an hour later or so, I was forced to restart my computer.

So now that I've exhausted those options, I'm lost. I'm going to take my monitor to a friend's tomorrow and see if I can narrow down the problem, but until then, does anyone else have any suggestions on what to do? No matter what I try, my monitor keeps intermittently blacking out, and I can't find any way to fix it.

I'll clarify any questions that need clarification.

Thanks!

[bboy_cero]

First: Hi!
Second: I know that the first one is stupid...
Third: Here we go:
- Are you donig anything when the screen goes black or it just gets black randomly, no mather if you listen to music, play games, watch videos, write in word, read e-mails......?
- Which was the last software you installed on your computer (before the bunch of drivers) ?
- Make sure that the mouse cable (if not wireless) don't touches the monitor cable.
- Plug out (while computer is off) the monitor cable, and plug it back in.
- If nothing from abouve works, try to connect another monitor with your computer (if you have any) and wait to see what will happen.

Regrads, bboy_cero