Monitor powers down

[Vasago]

HI guys!!
I havent posted here in awhile but the last few times i was greatly helped with my problems. Now I have a new one. Im putting my old comp back together for my mother to use and had it all together and even had it started up and was on the desktop. I did something somewhere and now the monitor powers down once i restart the computer. It will go through the normal routine checking all the specs, but before it finishes the monitor shuts down like it does when you are away from comp for a bit. Ive tried everything I could think to make it come on..even tried using the monitor from my comp and it does same thing. Im so lost now and not sure what to do. Any help is greatly appreciated

[Vasago]

BTW.Im running win98SE on this comp

[Puckdropper]

Check your APM settings. There will be controls in most modern BIOSes for them.

[Puckdropper]

Btw, APM means "Advanced Power Management."

[Vasago]

Do I do this in safe mode? and what exactly am i looking for to change there?...the monitor comes on in safe mode

[Puckdropper]

Go to display properties, Under the "Screen Saver" tab, you'll see "Energy saving features of monitor." Click on "Settings" and make the adjustments there... (You may have to adjust the "Turn off monitor" setting.)

[Catweazle]

I'd agree. forego the 50c per month saving on the power bill and set the monitor to 'Always on' or 'Never turn off' or whatever it is. (Sorry, I don't have a Windows 98 system connected up here ATM so I can check)

[Puckdropper]

Make sure you shut the monitor off manually if you're usinhg the "Always on" or "Never turn off" setting. If you don't, you will eventually kill it. (Trust me, I left my IBM 5151 on all the time and it died in about 2 months.) As long as you shut it off, it will be like a TV, ignoring the signal it recieves.

[Catweazle]

Must be luck of the draw then, I reckon. I've a 15" Compaq MV520 sitting behind me that's basically been operating like that since March 2000 and it still works perfectly!

[Puckdropper]

You mean you had the monitor on, just showing a screen saver the whole time?

[Catweazle]

System set to not shut down the monitor for 'power-saving' or 'Green' operation, and the monitor never turned off at the power switch except for the event of the house being unoccupied for periods of time.

Shut your system down, and the monitor should go to 'Stand-by' mode anyway.

By the way, this problem is a Windows-related one. To resolve it, ensure that 'Power management' is enabled in BIOS, and work through these Knowledge Base articles.

[Vasago]

Sorry guys...the settings for it were fine but it still doesnt work..could this be a vid card prob or a driver prob for the monitor i have?

[DMR]

I did something somewhere...

If you can think of anything more specific about what you did that would help.

When you say that you "put the computer back together", do you mean that you just reconnected all the peripheral components (monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc.), or did you add/change remove any internal hardware components or software in the process?

If the puter exhibits the same behaviour with two different monitors, it probably isn't the monitor.

[Vasago]

basically all i did was rehook up my 2 old HD's. I had it working once and it was adding new hardware and checking through what i had on there already. I didnt do anything that would have put it in sleep mode that i can think of. Looking through safe mode it still says i have my other graphics card in it and the monitor comes up as (unknown device)..and it wont allow me to change anything. I have no clue what to do now. If i can just get the monitor to come on i can fix anything else thats wrong but i cant figure this out and it seems noone else can either

[Catweazle]

Sounds like the display drivers have become corrupted, and when that happens it can become rather messy tracking down bits and pieces of them. To really 'fix' it you need to remove every trace of old drivers before reinstalling them, and that involves deleting files in your system folder and tracking down references in the registry and removing them. It also means there's a possibility of corruption to parts of the motherboard chipset drivers and other display-related system files.

You could try downloading and installing again first the motherboard chipset drivers and then the display card drivers, but you'd have far more chance of success by simply downloading all the drivers for the system, saving them to CD for later installation, and then performing a Format and fresh install of that old system.

Sometimes, popping a hard drive, complete with Windows 98 installation, into a system will work just fine. Devices will de detected and the appropriate driver changes will be made, and the system work just fine. But when things don't work as they should afterwards, it will usually be a less time consuming process to bite the bullet and do a format/fresh install.

[Vasago]

i just hate to do a reformat because there is stuff on the drives i might not be able to get back and for some reason the comp is recognizing the cd rom so i cant even use the disks i have

[Catweazle]

Have you tried going into 'Power Options' and setting the PC to 'Always On' and all the components to shut down 'Never'? At the very least, it might eliminate that monitor shutdown while you're correcting the problems, and you can change it back to a better scheme later when you get things sorted out.

Follow this pictorial guide but instead of the suggestions included, make the change of scheme to 'Always on' and the other settings to 'never'. That should give you a temporary fix.

The next thing to address is an optical drive for the system. Without one, you're pushing **** uphil in a sieve, I'm afraid.

The CD drive won't be getting recognised because it'll most likely be an old Panasonic drive hooked up to the soundcard. By far the best way to fix it would be to replace it with an ATA drive, which gets hooked up to an IDE cable just like the hard drives do. Check where the drive data cables go. Here are a few options to look for inside the system case:

Floppy drive.
- data cable goes to connector on motherboard
- data cable goes to connector on a controller card

Hard drive
- cable goes to connector on motherboard
- cable goes to connector on controller card

CD-ROM
- cable goes to connector on motherboard
- cable goes to connector on soundcard
- cable goes to connector on same controller card as floppy and hard drive

Check it out and post back please with a description of the setup in that old machine. The info will help us provide instructions for getting the CD drive working (or either cheaply replacing it with one that will or temporarily hooking up a 'borrowed' one to get things fixed up)

You really need a CD drive going, even if it's only during the process of installing drivers and fixing up the configuration problems.

[Vasago]

I dont even get the bottom half of the sreen saver screen to adjust times or anything..its all blank..just goes as far as power schemes and it was set to always on..but nothing else under it to control times. Could it just be a monitor that my comp doesnt recognize?..the system is an old gateway 2000 and the monitor is a HP MV500

[Catweazle]

Nope, it won't be that. Even when your system has a driver installed for the moitor, all the driver really does is provide a list of screen resolutions that your monitor supports, so that you don't try to set it to resolutions and refresh rate that might damage the monitor or simply make your screen go 'black' ;)

If that's a Gateway system, you should be able to get the drivers etc that you need from the Gateway website download section

If you've swapped another hard drive into the system, and things are no longer working as they should, I'd repeat that a format/fresh install is the best available option.

Lift your data files off it (by temporarily installing it as 'slave' in another computer and copying them across if necessary) and then do a new install and load the correct drivers to get things going.