No signal to monitor after restart

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Here are my computer specs:

Dell XPS 8300
i7-2600 (8 MB cache 3.4 ghz)
12 GB DDR3 SDRAM 1333 Mhz 2x4 GB 2x2 GB
AMD Radeon HD 6670 1GB DDR5
Windows 7 Home Premium

Computer purchased in late 2011. Monitor is an LG and is about the same age.

A few months ago I performed some Windows updates on my computer then restarted. When the computer rebooted, I got power but no signal displayed to the monitor. I troubleshooted the connections to the monitor and confirmed that the monitor was working fine with a laptop. Despite several attempts to cold boot, I was still not getting a display on the monitor. At about the same time, I lost the wifi card connection and had to use an ethernet port to hook up my router to the computer so I would have internet access. I disconnected everything and opened up the computer. I dusted everything thoroughly, closed up the panel, and plugged the computer back in the outlet about 30 minutes later. The computer booted up as normal, with display. So I concluded that the computer was having trouble with operation due to dust build-up. I left my router hooked up via ethernet.

About a week or so ago, I had a number of Windows updates stacked up, so I updated and restarted. Same problem again. I followed the same procedure as before and was able to get it working with display again.

Can someone help me determine what the problem may be here? I need to be able to restart and shut down my computer without this issue recurring. Could it be the display card or is it something more serious, like the motherboard? Why would opening it up and dusting it make a difference? Or maybe it has nothing to do with that, just a coincidence. Thank you.

Jason

 

Hi Flavellee. Thanks for responding. Yes, this graphics card came with the computer. It has not been replaced. I am using the VGA connection, but I also have a DVI and HDMI connection available on the card and monitor.

Jason

 

Hi Flavellee. Thank you for taking the time to outline a potential solution. Is there a way to do a workaround to the integrated VGA port without shutdown? What I'm afraid of is, if the problem is not the graphics card and the motherboard (or something else) instead, I may not be able to resuscitate the computer again if it won't send the signal. I can't really afford to have that happen as I need to have access to the computer for my work. Is there a way we can use some deduction to eliminate other plausible causes without shutdown? Thanks. -Jason

 

Thank you very much for the assistance you have given me. I will see if I can find other potential solutions as well. I truly appreciate your help. -Jason

 

More then likely the update installed an updated AMD GPU driver that no longer works with your system. It looks like your system comes with both an integrated Intel GPU as well as the Dedicated AMD GPU. This AMD model does not play well with Windows 10. The Default setting Disables the Integrated Intel GPU.

I have a few options you can try. First if you are so concerned that powering off your computer will cause issues. Then I recommend creating an image backup using the following program. Make sure to create a Bootable Rescue Disk as well to make sure you can always restore your computer to this state. It will probably also be able to be restarted in safe mode. Once you have the backup created let me know and I can direct you further.

Macrium Reflect free
https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

https://reflect.macrium.com/webtutorial/How_to_create_a_disk_image.asp

Also Perform the following:

Step 1:
Speccy
Download Speccy to your desktop

1. File > Save Snapshot. This will create a file called [hostname].speccy
2. File > Publish Snapshot. This saves your snapshot to their servers
3 Copy and Paste the link to your next Reply