Q: I turned on my PC this morning and the monitor would not work. The lights were on and all the cables connected. I swapped the monitor with the one on my son’s PC and the monitor worked fine, but his screen wouldn’t work on my PC so it looks like a fault with my PC not responding to any monitor. Can you offer any advice?
A: You’ve already done the first part of the troubleshooting by establishing that the monitor is fine and therefore the video feed from the PC is at fault. Assuming that the computer seems to be booting up correctly – the lights come on and it’s making all the right noises – then this is most likely a problem with the graphics card.
If you have a separate card but there’s also an onboard graphics option on the motherboard you can try taking the card out and connecting the monitor to the onboard feed. This should be detected automatically. If it works then you know that your graphics card is at fault. Before you throw it away, however, try blowing any dust out of the slot with a can of compressed air, or gently vacuuming it, then reinstalling the card. Sometimes reseating a card in this way can persuade it to work.
The most common problem with graphics cards is that the cooling fan fails and the card refuses to work because it overheats. It’s possible to buy replacement fans – search online for graphics card cooler – so you may not have to scrap an expensive card.
If you’re already using onboard graphics then the fault lies with the motherboard. Replacing this is not necessarily expensive but is a bigger job, just make sure you get the correct board for your processor. Depending on the age of your system it may be time to look for a replacement machine.
Replacing the cooler could save you having to scrap an expensive graphics card
Originally featured in PCU119
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
I usually run into counting the number of beeps at post. If it is the right number for a video card then i usually have to re-set it in the slot. Somehow i have issues with this on the AGP 8x port in an older pc of mine. This actually helped me by giving me new ideas. Thanks for the post!
Thanks for sharing such good ans. and keep it up!!!
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Hi,
Most of the material on the site comes from back issues of PCU, but we might be interested in the odd guest posting. What sort of thing did you have in mind?
IB
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