Monitor doesn't respond

I have an older Gateway PC with a newer LCD Gateway Monitor. It was all working quite good up until I downloaded a driver detective software and ran it. The next time I turned on my PC, the monitor, although it showed that it was 'on', didn't respond. I tried putting a different monitor (the one that it shipped with) on it to see if it was a problem with my LCD monitor. The older monitor didn't come on, either, even though it was turned on. Next, I tried to use the WinXP CD to boot from and to reinstall WINXP but, since the monitor wasn't being recognized, that didn't work. Does anyone have any idea what I could do to 'fix' this?

 

I don't know about the last part, that doesn't seem clear.

Try booting into VGA mode. Start tapping the F8 key several seconds after power-up (before Windows normally begins to load). At the Startup Options screen, you will see the selection for VGA mode.

Let us know if it works there. If it does, you could try doing a System Restore to before the changes were made.

Matt

 

The monitor isn't being recognized by the PC - thus, it turns on but the screen stays black when I turn the pc on. I will try using the F8 key when I first turn on the pc and hope that does the trick. I do know about running it in safe mode and the system restore service - if I could just GET to it! Thanks for the help - I'll see what I can do with it and let you know what happens.

 

If you have onboard video and you added a video card, windows can default to the onboard card. Is so after staring the computer, unplug the monitor from the card and plug it into the onboard and it should work. Then go to settings and switch the primary display,plug the monitor into the card, done.

 

I will look to see if I have onboard video - I don't think that I do but will certainly check. Thanks a lot for the info.

 

Well, I wasn't able to get anywhere by pressing the F8 key when I turned it on and I don't have another video plug-in that I can use. BUT, I pulled out the video card and turned my pc back on and let it run for a few minutes, then turned it off, put the video card back in and when I turned it on, I got as far as the Windows screen and then it locked up. I again rebooted - nothing. Turned off-took video card out, ran it, turned off, put video card back in. This time I got to the system restore screen and was able to put it back to when I knew it was a good date. However, it stopped responding and the monitor went out when I was almost finished with the system restore (as it was restarting). Tried to turn it on, had to turn off, reboot, remove video card, reboot, run, turn off, install video card again and turn on. This time, it booted all the way up and said that it had successfully restored to the date I chose. I played a couple of short games on it to make sure it was working and then, to test it, I had it restart. This time I again got a black screen. Tried it a couple of times. I need to remove video card again and reboot, install video card and turn back on. If it comes up this time, I will roll back the video card driver to a previous version and see if that does it but don't have time to do it now. I'll let you know what happens when I do this.

 

It's an AGP card - several slots available but only one that will work with the video card as it plugs in to a 'set' location.

 

Good idea - this pc IS 8 or 9 years old and has never been cleaned good on the inside! I'll give it a try!

 

It's working!!! I cleaned the video card and put it back in. Turned it on and it locked up at the Windows screen but rebooted and this time, it came up and is running good. I did a 'restart' and that worked, too. It shut down just fine and I am quite certain that it will run good when I start it up again. Whew!

Thanks for all the help from all of you! All good suggestions and especially the one about cleaning the video card! Because it was working just fine before I installed the Drive Detective, I didn't connect it with the fact that the card might need cleaning. I do think that was the problem.

I'll be 68 on Dec. 30th so my brain doesn't seem to function quite as good as it used to! I'm so glad to have found a good website to go to for helpful information for this old brain!