Desktop Power On (Blue Light) But Monitor Not Recognizing Desktop

[cjfromva]

Computer belongs to my elderly 86 year old mother who lives in IL and I live in VA so I can only say what she tells me.  She says power button on CPU is lit up blue.   Her Dell P109S monitor power light shows yellow (off).  When she turns the monitor on, the monitor power light shows green for a short period of time while the screen flashes "Auto Detect" then "Analog" then "Entering Power Saver Mode", then the monitor shuts itself back down.  This tells me that the monitor does not recognize that the Desktop is on.  The screen does not show the BIOS (if the hard drive was dead) and does not give an error message referring to the video cable.  She has shut the computer down, turned the UPS power supply that the computer and monitor is plugged into off and then back on, then turned the computer back on.  This does not fix the problem.  Do you have any suggestions as to what the problem is? 

Thanking you in advance, cjfromva

[TheOldMan]

Probably going to have someone be on-site that has at least some computer skills.  Assuming that the cables are still connected properly and the rest of the setup has been undisturbed, than possibly there has been a hardware failure.

That model only has onboard graphics and VGA out.  The monitor seems to be looking for an analog input, which would indicate it probably is still functioning.  The only way to verify that would be to have another PC connect to it to check whether it is really working.  If that step is showing the monitor is OK, then the next step is to find the problem with the graphics out of the PC.  My normal troubleshooting would be to add a real graphics card to the PC which would disable the onboard graphics and give a different output for the monitor.  I would not expect your mother to be able to preform any of these tasks.

[erico]

Troubleshooting the issue can be done with a couple of different approaches.

1) you could test the Dell display  and cable by connecting it to a different desktop PC.  If it works without issue you will now know that the VGA cable and the display are working.

2) you could also connect a different display to the slimline PC. 

3) you could install a low power PCI Express x16 graphics card that has a VGA output connector in the empty PCIe slot of the slimline PC. If it now has a normal display you will know that the onboard video output is no longer working.

Her best bet would be to disconnect the PC and take it to a shop without the Dell display to have the no display issue tested.   The troubleshooting should be inexpensive.

Troubleshooting display issues at a distance is quite difficult because it does require hands on troubleshooting. It also requires access to a known working display, an appropriate video card and a VGA cable.