tempermental screen/graphics card

[phatzo]

Hi all
just throwing this out there in case anyone knows exactly whats going on. About a year ago I turned on my computer and the screen didn't recognise that the computer was on ( just stayed dark and the power light didn't change from orange to blue ) I unplugged things, wiggled them, cleaned them and plugged them all back in again, still no joy. Then almost casually as I walked past I flicked it on and it all worked, this is starting to happen more often, getting up to and over 50% of the time and there seems to be no lowest common denominator as to when it fires up, it seems completely random to me. Now I leave it turned on as much as possible but thats not really the solution and its starting to p1ss me right off. Any ideas?

[SPKmes]

My daughters monitor has this problem...well sounds the same...with hers it is the cable from box to monitor it has a dodgy wire/crimp/.....I have to move the cable to a point where what ever connection has lost it's solid connection touches and taped it in place (side of the monitor)...one day I will get her a new cable 

[phatzo]

I forgot to mention that it works if its not plugged into the graphics card. I'll try the cord replacement when I get home.

[Gryffin]

I was in the same boat at SPKmes. Similar symptoms that turned out to be a dodgy cable. I would start there, as it is the easiest/cheapest thing to test

[bj229r]

Watch the hard drive LED. see if it shows the same pattern under normal operation vs when it does nada. I had similar. I could tell the thing wasn't truly firing up. Reseated cpu/memory, has been ok for month or so

[FLS]

I've had this in the past where it was a timing issue between the high resolution monitor and the Ati graphics card. There was a setting in the graphics driver program that fixed it. IIRC, it was a few years ago, booting into safe mode worked and let me adjust the settings.