Monitor display at bootup

[4breezes]

Several times recently, including both yesterday and today, I've had my monitor act strangely during the initial bootup in the morning. As soon as I hit the power button it immediately displays a little box showing that it is toggling back and forth between analog and digital. That's as it has always been. But then the display goes blank, and nothing more appears. In the past I've always been able to follow the boot sequence. Now nothing more appears, though I've waited as much as ten minutes. The screen remains blank, so I have no idea whether the system is actually booting. I have to power-off the surge protector and start over. Both yesterday and today the third try worked--the display came up, the system was seen to boot, and I was able to proceed.

The monitor in question is a Samsung SyncMaster 932B, running off an NVidia Geforce 6200 AGP card. The motherboard is an old Gigabyte 7ZXE 1.x I have it set for a digital display--changed a month ago from analog.

What's happening here?

[Ol'Tunzafun]

I have it set for a digital display

By this you mean it is plugged in to the white DVI port on the GF6200 card?

[4breezes]

I think so, though I'll have to pull the cable to be sure.

The card has two ports, analog and digital, plus a TV out. I'm plugged into the port marked "DVI". It requires a different cable that the analog port. The monitor also has an analog and a digital port.

I'll pull the cable and check further tonight when I powerdown.

[Midknyte]

displays a little box showing that it is toggling back and forth between analog and digital.

That means the system is not booting and the monitor is searching for a signal. That doesn't necessarily mean a bad video card.

Sounds like an older system. Did you check for bad caps or swap the PSU?

[Ol'Tunzafun]

Leaky capacitors
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=195
http://home.earthlink.net/~doniteli/index27.htm

[4breezes]

That means the system is not booting and the monitor is searching for a signal. That doesn't necessarily mean a bad video card.

Sounds like an older system. Did you check for bad caps or swap the PSU?

Yes, it's an older system. You won't find the Gigabyte 7ZXE motherboard on anything too new. I've had the tower open fairly recently, and looked specifically for bad caps. I found none, but that isn't absolutely conclusive, of course. The PSU has been replaced--see some of my previous posts.

When I say that the system toggles between analog and digital, I mean as soon as I power up the tower. It's always done that, for as long as I've had this system. It usually goes back and forth two or maybe three times before proceeding. When it fails to boot the screen goes blank, but the lights on my USB hub do come on as usual.

I can't really tell what it's doing because of the blank screen.

[Ol'Tunzafun]

Does the HDD LED continue to blink after startup?
Have you tried switching back to VGA ?

[4breezes]

Does the HDD LED continue to blink after startup?
Have you tried switching back to VGA ?

Sorry for the delay in answering. I wanted to try a number of boots before coming back. I would say that the HDD LED does continue to blink when the screen is blank. The USB hub lights are lit and the HDD LED blinks, but the screen remains blank.

I can't pinpoint exactly when this issue started. I too am wondering whether it may be a result of my switching from analog to digital display. That would be the easiest answer. That would indicate a problem in either my video card or the digital display cable. Guess I'll have to switch back to analog just to find out/verify. I'll try that in a couple days.

Any other thoughts or suggestions?

[Ol'Tunzafun]

Guess I'll have to switch back to analog just to find out/verify.

That's what I was about to suggest. If that does give you back your video, you may find that you have incurred some file system damage from hard shutdowns, but CHKDSK (or AUTOCHK) should take care of that.

[Steve R Jones]

When you press the power button - hold it in an extra second or two.

[4breezes]

When you press the power button - hold it in an extra second or two.

Tried it--no difference. Moved it back to analog, have the same behavior.

As best I can tell, the monitor is receiving no video signal when this happens. The process to wake up the system is: 1) turn on the power at the surge protector (this turns on the monitor, and it immediately indicates no signal, 2) hit the power button on the tower (this sends video signal to the monitor) 3) boot process starts. But sometimes when I power up the tower it DOES NOT send the video signal to the monitor, and therefore the monitor indicates that it is still searching for a signal.

Where is the culprit? What can be done to correct this situation?

[Ol'Tunzafun]

What do you have for spare parts to swap in? The fact that the HDD light continues to blink after startup suggests that the video is bad, but having to toggle the power at the power bar suggests a problem with the PSU. Just because it is new, does not mean that it is still good.

[4breezes]

I think I explained that poorly. The way the system is set up, the normal boot process, is to turn power on at the surge protector (that immediately feeds power to the monitor, which is never turned off independently), then turn the tower on with the switch on it's front. Both the monitor and the tower are connected to the surge protector, so that must be turned on first. It's not that I'm toggling on and off, on and off, but rather that I'm turning power on in sequence.

Hope that makes sense.

[Rocketmech]

Try testing without any usb devices connected. Also, reseat the 6200 card in its slot making sure it is seating correctly. AGP cards were notorious for slipping out of the slot due to case binding.