monitor serching for imput

Hi,
I'm sixty and i'm new to the forum, so I send greetings to all

My Monitor has trouble sometimes, it goes blank with a message about Auto : signal lost shutting down. Screen goes black but the computer still is running: say you were on a video, the sound keeps playing. I'm assuming it's either the monitor or the video card.

The PC tower was dropped down a flight of stairs (don't ask) and It was checked and pronounce okay.

I've reseated the Graphics Card and changed the cord from the monitor to the Graphics card.

Any Idea? If the video card works sometimes could it still have gotten damaged in the fall?

 

Greetings, Sixty, and welcome to MajorGeeks.

Very easily and probably likely given your symptoms. Does the motherboard have an onboard graphics connector? If so, you can try that (should be an automatic, but on some machines you have to go into your BIOS setup to enable onboard and disable the AGP or PCI-E card) just to see if you can change the symptoms.

You can also plug in another monitor for testing purposes, but I'd be willing to bet that something's broken in that tower.

 

After insuring all cables are securely fastened, trying another monitor would be my first suggestion. Note many current TVs support computer input if another monitor is not available.

 

Thanks, I've got a lap top I can hookup the monitor too. I'm trying to play Lord of the Rings. I'll see if the monitor doesn't cut out when I'm playing it on the Laptop. Good Idea, why I didn't think of it I don't know.

 

Ya , I'm afraid your right. I'm just trying everything else before I give up. But if I buy a card what can I use in a upgrade GPU. I don't want to just buy one that works with the 400w PSU and find out it won't work with my CPU.

I guess I'm trying to find out what I need to know to make sure I buy a card that will work given my computer. I don't want to do something dumb and buy a card I can't use with my system.

 

If the monitor blanks out there, then that points to the monitor. But for a conclusive test, I would still want to try another monitor on the PC.

 

Okay, I'll work on that. Hopefully I can borrow a monitor. If not I can try my TV, it should work, but I don't have my HDMI hooked up on my PC, I had trouble with my fingers getting that hook up, but I can give it a try.
Thanks.

 

You may not need to go HDMI. Many TVs support plain D-Sub (standard VGA) and/or DVI connections. Whatever is easier.

 

Thanks Digerat.

 

You're welcome. Keep us posted.