Resolved Problem changing monitors

I am working on a family member's Dell computer with XP. It has had an inexpensive 17" LCD (yes.. 17 ") monitor attached via VGA for years. The XP setting is for Plug and Play Monitor, not model specific. When I went to attach a barely used Viewsonic VG930m 19" LCD monitor that was orphaned by a system upgrade at work, the screen stays black but flashes with a solid light grey every couple of seconds... over and over. The blue "on" light on the power button flashes along with it. And since I cannot see what XP is doing, I have no idea if the monitor has been detected as new hardware or not.

I verified that the VGA cable is OK on another computer (The original monitor's VGA cable is permanently connected to it). I downloaded the XP driver from Viewsonic and installed it but nothing seems to help. Is this behavior indicative of failure or is there something in the setup that I am forgetting? With Plug and Play, I always thought it was pretty automatic, it just may not be performing optimally.

Thanks.

 

Sounds like your new monitor has failed in some way, I assume the old monitor still works?

FWIW the gray flashes could actually be an error report for engineers (eg many PC's use BIOS beep codes to indicate where errors are, Amiga's went through a cycle of colours before booting etc)

 

Hi Larry, I would look at the video card if there is any installed, if not try one it should load the MS drivers for it automatically.
My spare Monitor Dell 17" has a button to manually switch between VGA and DVI.
What happens when you connect it to your machine, that would tell you definitely whether it is working or not.
hawk22

 

Yes, the old monitor thankfully still works.

It does have a DVi plug, too, so I will look for a switch again. Didn't see one before. Hawk, you are right, the ultimate test would be to bring the monintor home and try it out here. Just lazy.

Thank you.

 

OMG. Totally lost track of this one. Sorry (and thanks to mattman for the wake up call).

It was the monitor after all. I just couldn't believe it since it was practically new. Oh well. Off to fight other battles.

Thanks again to all!!!