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February 28th, 2004 02:00

Monitor randomly goes black for one second at a time

I have a relatively new monitor and computer system (bought May 2003) and in the past few months, the monitor will go completely black for about one second and then come back on randomly throughout the day.

It will do this completely randomly and sometimes will not occur at all for a week or so, but then without warning, will start up again, going black many times throughout the day. The diagnostic lights are all on green normally, and since the screen goes black for only one second, I don't have time to check the tower while the monitor screen is black.

The power light stays solid green with no change when the monitor goes black.

I've checked the cord connecting the monitor to the tower and it's as secure as I can push it in on both ends. A friend recommended that I get a new cord (he said it would the "HD15 (plug) SVGA monitor cable"), but I wasn't able to find anything like that on the Dell website.

Does anybody have any suggestions for what could be causing this problem, and how I can fix it?

Thanks in advance for any help.

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12 Posts

February 29th, 2004 01:00

Not yet.

1 Message

February 29th, 2004 01:00

my monitor doing same thing  have you recieved any answers

3 Posts

February 29th, 2004 02:00

I have the same problem.  Anyone knows how to fix it?

3 Posts

February 29th, 2004 04:00

i just called tech support.  they suggested to press on the ok button on the monitor, then using arrows go to factory settings, then press the ok button on yes.  i still don't know if this will work, but it's worth a try.

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February 29th, 2004 12:00

I'll try it, but when this first started happening to me, I called Tech Support, and they told me to do that, and maybe for a month or so, I didn't have any problems, but then it started up again.

So if that's a solution, then it's only a temporary one.

2 Posts

February 29th, 2004 17:00

I have the same issue.  Contacted Dell support.  I was also told to reset my monitor to factory defaults.  Did this, it did not help.  I've also reinstalled my video driver & monitor driver.  Turned off all power save features and screen saver.  My computer is less than a month old.  Have you been able to find an answer?

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March 1st, 2004 01:00

Nope, still no answer. I guess Tech Support really doesn't have an answer on this. It's a shame, too. Maybe it's a faulty cord or something, and if so, we should be able to get it replaced free of charge.

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March 1st, 2004 12:00

I have had the same problem for several months, and am convinced it started when I installed one of the Windows updates, but am not sure which one, since the problem is intermittent.  I just think it is some kind of software conflict.

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March 1st, 2004 18:00

Hmm. That's an option I hadn't thought of. Does anyone have any idea about what sort of Windows update would do that?

11 Posts

March 2nd, 2004 06:00

I have the same Problem with my monitor, I called and called and called Tech support try fixing Display tried everything they even told me I need to put on a screen saver I got so fed up with Tech support I told them I want a new tower cause I really think It is some how a tower issue not a monitor one,Well after almost to weeks of calling Tech support. I called again and spoke to customer service and demanded a Tower exchange. I figure it must be a conflict with something or maybe my tower cant handle the monito. I have a Dimension 4600,120 gb hard drive,256 mb of ram with a 128mb DDR NVIDIA GEFORCE FX 5200, 17inch lcd flat monitor (w1700).

11 Posts

March 2nd, 2004 11:00

Well I guess I have to do the same thing cause if it aint the Tower problem then I'm going to have to send the monitor back. I switched cables cause mine came with a white (digital) Cable and a blue (anolog) cable, it  seems to be working so far with the blue cable but the white (digital) cable looks so much better and I'm not gonna settle for anolog when the dag monitor alone is costing me $800 dollars. The reason I'm getting the tower switch is cause the last person I talked to (customer support) told me it was my video card. But I dont think he really knew.

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March 2nd, 2004 11:00

I ended up calling Tech Support yesterday, and after trying a few troubleshooting ideas which didn't work, the man I spoke with said that he would put in an order to replace my monitor.

But now I'm worried, if you think it's a tower problem, maybe I should have asked for a tower replacement, especially if you have a flat screen (I don't).

I guess once the new monitor arrives, I'll see what happens.

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March 3rd, 2004 12:00

I don't know if this will help, but it made me feel better: I called Dell Tech Support and they sent me out a new monitor (got it in less than 24 hours from when I made the call, too!) and I set it up today. While I was unplugging the old monitor, after it was unplugged from the tower, but before I unplugged the power, it did the blacking out thing. So I think it's *not* tower related.

The new monitor is working great so far, but granted, it's only been plugged in for about half an hour.

March 6th, 2004 15:00

I had the same problem with my FP1800. It would occur ONLY when using the DVI cable. It was fairly random but seemed to occur mostly when I would minimize a window on the screen. The monitor would blank out for a 1/1.5 seconds or so and then come back on. the LED on the front never changed from green.

I had contacted Dell about this problem the day it happened (which was the day I got the monitor). They sent out a replacement monitor and it did the same thing. This was using a different DVI cable as well. So at this point we've ruled out a monitor issue as well as a cable issue. Also note: this ONLY occurred when using the DVI port on the monitor, VGA worked (and continutes to work) perfectly fine.

I've concluded that the problem lies with the DVI out on my Radeon 7500 card. This is 3rd party card I installed that is out of warranty so no replacement for me.

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March 7th, 2004 00:00

This may sound very stupid, but what is the DVI cable and what do you use it for?

The blacking out on my monitor would happen regardless of what I was doing. Since I mainly spend most of my time in Microsoft Word, I'd usually be typing when it would happen, but it would also happen when I was just surfing the web. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it.

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