Aaiieeee 3

On Sunday last, my monitor simply turned off by itself. It displayed a message, "Signal: No signal". I turned off my PC and checked the cable connections to make sure that everything was in proper order, then I turned on the computer. Everything worked fine...till Monday morning when the same thing happened. Around noon, the monitor would only show the message, "Signal: No signal". Restarting the computer no longer helped. I couldn't blog!

Here are the different things I tried without success:

1. Plugged in a different monitor.
2. Called up ASUS and followed their advice. I unplugged each of these and tried to boot up: sound card...DVD drive...floppy drive...hard drive...and finally the graphics card.
3. The motherboard did notice the absence of the graphics card by beeping but upon plugging it back in, I got the same monitor message.

And then, hope. Called up ASUS again, took out the Nvidia card and the CMOS battery, then plugged in both after a minute. The computer booted up and the monitor no longer showed that irritating message. YES, FINALLY IT--"There's an error with a file in your Windows directory."

Yes, the non-number part of the post title is a word.

I couldn't fix that error; tried for almost two hours. I took my extra hard disk and decided to use that as a boot drive. Installed Windows XP and the plethora of drivers on it; must have restarted over two dozen times. After all that, my monitor crashed. At 2 a.m. on Tuesday.

It still has a tendency to shut itself off at any time it pleases. Yesterday, the monitor died on five occasions including that late night gift. Each time I had to shut down and boot up the computer to get the monitor back on.

Best guess: Either my graphics card is misbehaving or the AGP slot on my motherboard is at the end of its life.

So, blogging will be sporadic for the next few days, maybe weeks (gasp!).

Comments

[the anti-jihadist]

Back up all your data now, while you still have the chance. Then dump whatever elderly computer you are now using and get something newer, like a laptop, with built-in WIFI and a gig of RAM. They're cheaper than ever, and don't require as much of a trade-off between functionality and portability. Laptops now outsell desktops. You can take your laptop to some hotspot and blog while you're sipping frappucino someplace. I got a newer laptop recently and it rocks.

[Isaac Schrödinger]

First thing I did when I got the computer working again: Backed up all my important data.

The desire for a new computer is not the issue; it just doesn't compliment my pocket. *sniff*

[slickdpdx]

The latte sipping will hit you where it hurts too!

[Isaac Schrödinger]

I've yet to drink coffee!

The caffeine jolt from Coke and Pepsi keeps me awake for a good five hours, the same with tea. Can't imagine what coffee would do.

[evariste]

If money is tight, and you don't play videogames on your computer, you should buy a PCI video card to avoid buying an AGP one only to discover that you still have a problem and the motherboard's slot was to blame, not the card. Alternatively, see if someone will lend you a known-good AGP card for a day.

[Isaac Schrödinger]

I've thought about the reverse second option. Likely tomorrow, I'll take my video card to a friend to see if there are any problems with it. The card is four years old, so I won't cry if it's toast.

Right now, the monitor hasn't died in about 18 hours which means that I have a completely inconsistent problem. I'd rather take a final and total component failure over this annoying guess game.

[evariste]

Argh! Yeah, intermittent failures are the most aggravating to diagnose.