HP w1907 Flat Panel Monitor Goes Blank

[postlupo]

After working fine for 33 months, my HPw1907 Flat Panel monitor goes blank after a minute or two.  It is connected to PC (Pavilion Elite m9400t, operating on Windows 7)  via DVI input.  Tried connecting it to VGA input, same thing happens.  The video board is:  768MB NVIDIA GeForce 9600GS, DVI-I, VGA, HDMI.

Tried connecting the HPw1907 monitor to a different PC, it works fine, no problem.

Connected a different monitor which works fine with a different PC, to the m9400t, same thing happens—after a short period of time, it also goes to sleep/blank.

All power settings have been changed to ‘NEVER’ turn monitor off.

When PC is powered down & turned back on, the window which comes up briefly during rebooting, shows No Signal/Connection to either VGA or DVI input.

I’m not sure if the PC’s fan is operating, will have to open it up to check it out.  If in fact the fan is not operating, could there be an overheating problem causing a problem with the video board and therefore causing the monitor to loose its connection to the input?

The other PC mentioned above is an older HP m1195c, which has a Conexant 23880 Video Capture.  Could/should I try putting the video board from this other PC into the PC I'm having a problem with to isolate the problem to the video board currently installed?

Thank you.

[sumsolstice]

Well - if the PC doesn't power up - that would explain a lot.  The fans are a good indication.  Also - hard drive LED activity shows the system is booting up.   Usually - if there is a graphics problem, everything else will work fine.   I would have also suggested checking cables - but sounds as if you've done this already.

If you see boot activity and no graphics at all - yes, trying another PCI-E graphics card would be a good troubleshooting technique.

The M9400 is getting a bit long in the tooth - could be a power supply issue if you don't see any activity at all.   I've seen some systems like that have PSU failures - a fast blinking PSU LED on the back is a good symptom.  Fortunately, if so - thats a quick fix - you can usually found a good PSU replacement for about US $50 or so.

Let me know what you find out...

-DM (a long-time HP employee)

[postlupo]

Sorry if I misled you...there is no problem with the PC powering up, I was just wondering if it had gotten ultra dusty inside the cabinet, perhaps it was getting too warm inside...just a guess on my part.  So the PC boots up just fine.

I tried doing hard resets on both the PC & the monitor, having read that as suggestions in other posts having similar problems.

Following the resets, everything came on fine, the window I mentioned previously indicated an active signal between the monitor & the DVI input.  However, after a couple minutes, the monitor went to sleep.

After powering down the PC & turning it back on, once again everything started fine, including the monitor, and it has stayed on now for about 20 minutes....I'm typing this on the m9400 instead of my HP notebook which I was using earlier.

QUESTION:  If in fact the PSU is beginning to falter, would that screw up the video card/monitor connection?  Unfortunately, my setup configuration doesn't allow me to see the PSU LED you mentioned.

If the monitor goes out again, I'll try swapping the card from my other HP PC.

Thanks very much.

[sumsolstice]

I've only seen the fast blinking PSU LED on systems with dead PSUs - yours is not "dead".   For the record - every time I've seen one of them go that way - it is usually about 4 years or older, and after some event like a lightning strike, a circuit breaker trip, a power cord pulled, etc.

I'd suspect the GFX card before I would suspect the PSU.   PSU problems usually would be more noticable than a GFX issue.

 Also - if its a new problem, perhaps a recent driver or some other change introduced the problem.   You can always try a Windows restore point to before the problem occurred, or maybe even try a driver rollback of the graphics driver.

I've a w1907 at home that I use for working on PCs for family/friends - always seems to work fine for me.

-DM (a long-time HP employee)

[postlupo]

Thank you for the info. 

I know how to do a System Restore, but am not familiar with a driver rollback.  Could you pls advise how to do a driver rollback of the graphics driver?

I'm sure my w1907 monitor itself is fine like yours...it's performed flawlessly for almost 3 yrs.  Unless there's a problem with the driver, I think something is amiss in the PC.

Thank you.

[sumsolstice]

Not sure which OS you're running, but it usually goes something like this.

Go into Windows Device Manager.   A shortcut to get there is go to the Start Button, click on Run, type in  

devmgmt.msc 

  and click OK.

Find the Display adapter section, expand that to find your display adapter, right click on it and click on properties.

Click on the Driver tab.

If there is a previous driver available - you can click "Roll Back Driver".

A little bit less drastic than a restore point. 

-DM (a long-time HP employee)