Sometimes boots with no signal to monitor

So my home computer started this strange behavior about a week ago: about 2/3rd of the time when I turn it on the monitor says "no signal." No BIOS, no logos just blackness. My only option is to turn it off (by holding the power button) then back on until it happens to boots normally. I have 4 DVI out ports on my machine and it seems to make no difference which one I use.

My conclusion: my graphics card(s) are slowly dying.:cry I have (2) NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS cards with SLI enabled.

Anyone have any suggestions that don't involve me buying new graphics cards?

 

[deleted]

 

Check and make sure the cord connecting the graphic card to the monitor is secure, You could try powering off your machine, open it up and make sure the card it's self is secure as well. It's very possible that your card could be going bad.

Does your card have a fan? If so make sure it's not full of dust or anything, this could make your card over heat and cause strange behavior.

Also how old is the card?

 

You know how the old style monitors or maybe even newer ones, if they aren't hooked up to the pc, You get a thing on screen saying no signal? Mine does this when it's unhooked. That's why i suggested checking the cord and the card cause it seems that the monitor isn't getting a signal from the pc if it's saying (No signal), Ive also had this happen with a faulty GFX Card or loose connections. Ofcourse you won't get any logos or bios or anything if it's a lose connection or bad card messing up the signal to the monitor. I guess it could possibly be the psu as well, just troubleshoot and find out. I recommend checking the card and the cord first before buying a new psu, if that fails then buy a new psu and see if that fixes the problem.

 

I checked all connections and dusted off the cards and their fans. I dusted the whole tower really. The problem persists, but now it often boots to no signal but the computer keeps beeping every two seconds until I power it off. What does this imply?

And, it still boots just fine about 1/5th of the time.

All of the hardware is about 4 years old.

 

Try swapping the cards over. So put the one from the top slot in the bottom and the one from the bottom in the top.

 

Okay, problem solved. Apparently the problem wasn't with my computer but with my surge protector. God @#$%&%$@$ in the &%@%#%$ surge protector!
I plugged the computer into another outlet and it worked fine.

Thanks to everybody for their input. It was the suggestion that it might be the power supply that caused me to suspect my surge protector in the first place.