# Monitor keeps going black



## dreadpiratefluff (Oct 13, 2007)

Hi,

I was working happily away in Photoshop this morning when I started having this problem, and it seems to be progressing throughout the day. All of the sudden my monitor went black, and then came back again. At first it was just doing it every once in a while now it seems to be doing it every time I try to do something. The green light on the monitor USUALLY stays green, but then every once in a while when the monitor flickers to black the monitor goes to stand by. It seems to not only be doing it whenever it feels like now but also when I click on the start button, when I change windows, and sometimes even when I hit 'enter'.  

I'm a bit worried that it might be my graphics card. The thing is we just replaced the stinking graphics card maybe a year ago and we certainly didn't pay for a disposable one!

Oh, I almost forgot. One time when I restarted my computer it said something about overclocking failing, but it hasn't done it since then. I don't even know what overclocking is! It's not something I've told it to do anyways.

I'm wondering if my CPU is running a too hot too...I think it said something about being 78 degrees Celcius.

Ok that was nauseating...it just flickered on and off like ten times in a row. My window title bars seem to keep turning black now too.

I'm running Windows XP, this scan thing I did says I have an Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.40GHz, I've got 3 GIG of RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce 6600 LE.

AHHH!!! And now my windows are all disjointed!!

Do you need more info than that? I hope someone can help...

Jen


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## bigbear (Apr 27, 2004)

It sounds as if the machine has been overclocked and is becoming unstable.
Reset the cmos, this will reset the bios to the factory defaults.
With the pc switched off take the left hand side panel off and locate the motherboard battery (about 20mm dia).
Along side should be three pins with a jumper on the first two.
Remove the jumper and place on pins 2&3 for about 30 secs, then replace back on pins 1&2
If you can't find the pins remove the battery for the same amount of time, this will have the same effect


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## dreadpiratefluff (Oct 13, 2007)

I did that (resetting the bios to the factory defaults) and it doesn't seem to have really helped any. And one of the times when I started up this morning it still said overclocking failed. I had to start it four times this morning after being off for hours to get it to finally start up. The first time I got something about a disk error and to hit alt+ctrl+del, the second time it showed the initial loading screen and then just sat there, the third time it said overclocking failed so I hit F2 to load with defaults and then when it was going to my desktop it went black (but the monitor stayed on) and just stayed black and I had to restart again. Fourth time it finally loaded but just now I had it go to black and then back again.

I've even changed video cards to our older one (which itself might be bad, we had to replace it but I was just trying things on a whim) and it seems to be running exactly like the other card was. I was able to get Photoshop going for a good couple of hours and finish the drawing I was working on but then the going to black and back again thing started happening again. Keeps going to black and having problems with scrolling windows, stuff like that.

Any other suggestions? Is there anything else I should check on?


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## Rich-M (May 3, 2006)

I would start with psu. What brand and what wattage?
Then download and install Speedfan and let's see what temps and fan speeds are:
http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php


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## dreadpiratefluff (Oct 13, 2007)

I can't get into my computer at all now so unfortunately I can't do what RIch-M suggested above  Am typing this on a different one. We went and picked up a new graphics card to see if that was the problem and it's apparently not!

Now I'm getting an error that says that <Windows root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe is corrupted or missing so I'm doing some searching around to try and see if I can fix that problem  I'm going to try a repair with my Windows XP cd. I'm really starting to get worried.


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## Rich-M (May 3, 2006)

That's a blown registry which XP Repair should fix.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm


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## dreadpiratefluff (Oct 13, 2007)

Ok, I'm trying to fix that with XP Repair following the instructions on the link given and it can get through the first part of the repair but when it goes to restart it freezes so I have to shut it off then start it back up and then when it gets to the blue Windows page where it says it's installing it keeps freezing. 

OH great...and now I just restarted it to see if it would try to start on the repair again and it says that it couldn't start because SYSTEM.SAV is missing or corrupt. THis is about the fourth time I've tried to run the repair.

Do I need to f-disk and completely reinstall windows? If I do this will I lose the information on my second hard drive? I was only able to get into it long enough to back up just a little...if I lose that I'll lose all my digital photos and stuff like that 

THanks guys for the help so far, I really appreciate it. I hope this can get figured out. If not I guess I will have to find a local repair guy who isn't an idiot like the guy at the nearest PCWorld.


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## BratDawg (Sep 23, 2004)

Information saved on a secondary drive shouldn't be lost by fdisk of c drive. Is it a physical secondary drive or a partitioned single drive? Even if it's partitioned, wiping c: won't affect the other partitions.

Does the monitor work on another pc?

It may come down to taking the whole thing apart and adding one thing at a time to get to what is causing the problem if the above suggestions don't work. 

You might also check to see replacing the goop that you put between the processor and the heatsync fan that sits on top might help with the overheating. I don't remember what it's called, but you should be able to get some at any place that sells parts.


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## BratDawg (Sep 23, 2004)

Oh, and consider that power supply failure can cause soooo many headaches! And it's the last thing we think about sometimes. Go figure....


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## bigbear (Apr 27, 2004)

It could be a problem with your boot drive
Have you got a spare hard drive that you could hook up and see if you can get windows to install?
Also try changing the ribbon


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## ddc22 (Oct 15, 2007)

dreadpiratefluff said:


> Hi,
> 
> I was working happily away in Photoshop this morning when I started having this problem, and it seems to be progressing throughout the day. All of the sudden my monitor went black, and then came back again. At first it was just doing it every once in a while now it seems to be doing it every time I try to do something. The green light on the monitor USUALLY stays green, but then every once in a while when the monitor flickers to black the monitor goes to stand by. It seems to not only be doing it whenever it feels like now but also when I click on the start button, when I change windows, and sometimes even when I hit 'enter'.
> 
> ...


78 degrees C sounds hot. Are your fans running?


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## Rich-M (May 3, 2006)

Unplug the second drive when you go to reinstall Windows is the safest. And at this point I would reinstall using another drive.


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## dreadpiratefluff (Oct 13, 2007)

After it was still acting up when I completely reinstalled Windows we ended up calling a repair guy this morning. He came and took it away to do diagnostics, thinks it's probably a hardware failure, which was what I was thinking when it had the same problems after a complete Windows reinstall. Hopefully it's not dead!

THanks so much to everyone for your help, I really appreciate the quick answers.

- Jen


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