Video Card / Monitor Issue

[VPT]

Hey guys. Recently I came home and noticed that my computer was on and my monitor was on standby. In other words, the computer was on, but the monitor thought it was off. I checked all of the wires and everything was okay. I tried an old monitor and it was the same deal. I'm assuming that this is because of the video card, but I'm not too knowledgeable in these matters. The only thing I can tell you is that I upgraded the video card about three years ago from the default one to a GeForceFX to play a few games (I'm not a hardcore PC gamer and this is the only upgrade I've done other than RAM). I followed the instructions clearly and have never had any problems since now.

So I want to know what my options are. Do I just change the video card? Can I even do that without installing or removing drivers? Is the problem unrelated to the video card? Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

EDIT: By the way, I'm typing this on my lap-top.

[GosBroDansFan]

Are you using the DVI port?

[ShinjiGohan]

did you try moving the mouse and is your power saving mode on in windows?

[Manx]

I don't understand what you're saying, really.

Did you re-boot your computer and it still doesn't display anything? I'm going to assume that you did, since you said you swapped monitors. Monitors are not hot pluggable, so you shouldn't remove or attach them while the computer is on.

- Make sure that your PC is really on. It should have lights on the front and it should beep when/if it posts. It might have froze up during sleep mode, so unplug it and hold in the power button for about 10 seconds to make sure it's off and then plug it back in and turn it back on. If that don't work...
- If possible, try it out with another monitor. Your laptop should have a VGA port on it, so see if you can get the laptop to show up on the monitor. If it does, then the monitor is working and your video card *might* be bad.

If you think your video card is bad:
- Unplug everything from the PC.
- Re-install the video card. If that doesn't work, then
- remove everything from the motherboard. RAM, processor hard drive, DVD drive and everything. You should get beeps telling you that components are missing, so you don't have to have the monitor, or your mouse/keyboard plugged up for this test. Keep everything unplugged.
- Add everything back one by one in this order: Processor, memory, DVD drive, hard drive, video, mouse, keyboard, etc and the system should either work, or something is going to fail to cause the system to work.

Chances are it crashed during sleep mode and power cycling it will fix it. If not, reseating the video card and/or removing the components might work because sometimes they can build up static electricity and glitch up. And of course, something might just have fried in there. Hopefully not. g'luck :tup:

[VPT]

Thanks for the help Manx. GosBroDansFan, no, I wasn't using DVI.

I finally opened up the system (nothing new to me, I've installed a video card, RAM, and hard-drive--forgot to mention in my original post since I didn't remember until I opened it). As soon as I opened it, I heard something clinking around. Turns out it was a coil of copper from the video card that became detached. I could have done some research and soldered it back on, but I'm not taking any chances. My video card (the one that's now broken) isn't really that high-end and I'm not a hardcore PC gamer, so I just picked up a new one for $80 and installed it. Now everything is good.