My monitor just blew up

The screen size was getting a little weird (like, the righthand side was getting smaller, as if the whole image was moving to the left). I couldn't fix it, nothing I did would respond. Yeah, I could adjust the width...but the 1/2-inch or so of black wouldn't go away. Then it suddenly went to two inches of black on the righthand side. And then it kinda flashed, and went black. The power shut off, and wouldn't come back on.

Well, hell. It was a used monitor, bought five years ago. These things happen.

I switched monitors. The other one won't power up, either. Nada. Zip. Zilch. No screen.

I've got an onboard video card. Is this the point where I take it in to the shop and pay some ungodly amount of money to get it analyzed, and maybe even fixed?

AMD 2000+
MSI K7N2GM-L with onboard video and sound (nVidia nForce2 400/IGP and MCP2)
the monitor is Digital brand, bought used five years ago
the other monitor is what came with my mom's IBM about 18 years ago, but it works otherwise
All drivers, etc. are current.

 

Have you hooked up this 18 year old monitor to another computer and actually seen it running? If you have and it still isn't showing anything on your computer it would have to be a problem with your onboard video. You can't actually fix it if that's the case. The only thing you could do is buy yourself a new video card and put it in one of the free slots and then use that.

Of course if the onboard video actually died, you might want to just get a new board because everything else usually isn't too far behind.

Although to be perfectly honest the errors you've described sound more like monitor issues. It seems more likely that you've simply tried to use two broken monitors.

 

Yeah, I've narrowed it down to either the monitor or the video card. LOL!

Meh. I'm hauling the whole shootin' match to the shop tomorrow. I might get lucky.

 

Gotta love $60 refurbished monitors that have you up and running again in less time than it took to drive to the store and back.