no connection but hey it just ran ?

[Paul]

Been having this little pain of a prob for awhile now. Tends to be after the puter has sat overnight with power off.
I turn it on I see the boot screens but then when the windows boot screen has shown and it normally opens up the desktop it just goes blank and says (little square box in center of monitor)disconected monitor bla bla.
Then the only way I can re-start it is to hold the power button in for 5 secs wait for power off then turn it back on and then hey presto its all fine and it opens to my desktop.

Running this on XP pro, My thoughts are that it is the OS considering the monitor works just fine on boot GFX card works because its showing the windows bootscreen?

Any thoughts about what you think it might be.

[swiftynz]

does it ever do that in safe mode? cos if its not hardware my guess would be graphics card drivers not initialising properly.

easiest way to prove/disprove my theory is to try safe mode. :)

[KingJackal]

1) It's not the OS.
2) It might be a good idea to tell us what video card you're using:
- AGP/PCI
- brand
- model
- overclocked?
- driver revision

[Humantuckshop]

Is the refresh rate set to optimal? Maybe your monitor cannot handle it.

[swiftynz]

Originally posted by Humantuckshop
Is the refresh rate set to optimal? Maybe your monitor cannot handle it.
since its one of those monitors that says onscreen when it's disconnected, the chances are that it also will say when the frequency is out of range.

[Grrr!!]

Originally posted by swiftynz

since its one of those monitors that says onscreen when it's disconnected, the chances are that it also will say when the frequency is out of range.

That is the ONLY thing that my LiteOn wont signal onscreen :(. It signals when the power cable is disconnected and everything else though.

[Antimatter]

What are your system specs?
I've seen this kind of thing on a number of machines and often it has to do with the way Windows XP handles older ACPI implementations.
It might be worth doing a BIOS upgrade or changing the system type to standard PC in device manager.
More info on your machine would certainly help.

[Paul]

Running a gainward gf2ti450 Goldensample (this thing has 3.5 ns ram so I dont know if this name is correct all other 450ti have 4.5) with 22:50 (shipped with card)drivers and have also tried 27:42 at times, It is running at the fast setting for the card so a little manufactors o/c. This is on a Epox 8KTA3-Pro mobo with a 1.2T-bird (no o/c) and a AOC monitor(7vLr).
What I find strage is the fact that I have not made changes to trigger it and also that this only happens now and then, Today it ran first crack and may do so for the next couple of days before slipping back to the bad starting.
i hope the specs are a little better for you.
Yes it will say when frequency is out of range been down that road in the past.
I will try that safe mode start up for the next few days and see if I can still hit the same prob.

PS: Monitor is set at 85hertz 1024x768 so it is within range.

I dont think the bios is that out of date coolmhz did a update on it a few months ago.

[Paul]

while reading through the other posts on this forum I was just reminded that I had put a network card in so my other half could share the internet connection. Gezz been racking my brian for a while now as to what changes I might have made.
'I think'(lol dont try this at home) that this is more than likely the prob the card would fire up at that time and the fact that it is not allways enabled could also be why this prob only shows up random.

Will disable this network card every time I turn the puter off at night and see how things go.
Thanx everyone for the input you have still given me a range of other options to try, I will try one thing at a time for a few days so it will be some time before I can say yay or nay to any one of them.

[OldGrey]

I take it youve probably already done this, but have you checked event viewer to see if it logs any errors before it crashes?

Even if it gives you some random errors in there that make no sense, go to eventid.net and search for the event id that the error message has (if it does actually log one) and youll more than likely find your answer.

[Paul]

no events logged the computer seems to run fine makes all the correct sounds that it allways does when starting up its just that the screen is black after that windows XP boot screen and stays black I dont get to see that welcome screen, (auto log in set up)and no matter what keys I press, other than the power button for 5secs does a thing.
I think the systems loads just fine its just that no pic is being sent to the screen.

[OldGrey]

you say youve got 2 comps networked there, heres a last shot at something you could try. Install VNC as a service on your PC, and when it black screens, jump on your missus' box and vnc into yours, see if it lets you in and you could see whats going on. Ive done it before when im too lazy to reboot into safe mode, change res/ refresh rate etc after putting a ****ty spare monitor on that couldnt handle my res.

[Antimatter]

Check to see if you have any cards in PCI slot 1. If you have an older card on the same IRQ as your video adapter(even in XP), it can cause that kind of problem. Try the NIC in slot 2 or 3.