[Dolomieu]

I am trying to provide some help to my father-in-law who recently purchased a Samsung Syncmaster 245BW 24" monitor. He purchased and installed the monitor a weekago. His computer immediately began locking up. The monitor was bad (or at least a driver) and now the computer won't power up. I will start by saying I have no idea if the two issues here are related but I will lay out the full background and ask for any advise that anyone may be able to offer. If needed I can get the specs on the motherboard, harddrive, etc. when I speak to him next. Thanks in advance for any info!!

After the monitor was installed he was First able to boot windows but it would go to black screen very quickly. After that the computer would no longer turn on/off using the power switch on the front panel. He was however able to restart using the hard restart button on the front panel. He was able to reset the computer, then turn off the power supply, let it sit for a few minutes, and then power up, but it immediately went to black screen and locked up again.

He reinstalled the old monitor it started up and seemed to work. So he took the 245BW back to the store. They tested it on a computer at the store and it immediately crashed that computer. At this point it seemed the problem was solved. They gave him a new monitor and sent him home.

Installed the new monitor and the exact same problem as above occurred. He went back to the old monitor and used the reset, kill power supply trick to get the computer back up and running again. This time once windows loaded the disk check program started up (not sure why I am getting all info over the phone on this). Disk check ran for close to an hour the computer locked up and monitor went to black screen. Again the front panel power button was not functioning and he again used the hard restart, immediately killed the power supply on back of computer, let it sit, powered it back up to get it running. It started the disk check at the same spot where it previously crashed and it immediately locked up again. Only now this time there is no power to the machine at all. No matter what he does he can not get it to power up, not even to the BIOS.

Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again and Thanks for reading this long post.

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That could be a serious problem that can reflect a hardware failure in any part of the computer: power supply unit, motherboard, hard disk and cpu. It looks like the monitor caused, or triggered the problem.

Please do the following:

1: f there is an on/off switch on the psu make sure it's switched on.

2: Disconnect the power cable and take out the BIOS battery for about 10 minutes. Put the battery back, reboot and see if there is any response from the BIOS. If there are any beep sounds please mention them.

3: If the video card is an add-on and if there is another, onboard, connection, unplug the power, take out the add-on video card, connect the old monitor to the on-board card and reboot.

If nothing help then I think that your father in law will be better off taking the computer to a good lab. The reason is that to pinpoint the problem they will have to replace suspected parts with good ones, for test purposes. If he tries to do the diagnosis by himself he may end up spending a lot of money for parts that he doesn't really need.

I am curious about the problem and wonder who burned whom, the monitor burned the computer or vice versa.

[The Skeptic]

That could be a serious problem that can reflect a hardware failure in any part of the computer: power supply unit, motherboard, hard disk and cpu. It looks like the monitor caused, or triggered the problem.

Please do the following:

1: f there is an on/off switch on the psu make sure it's switched on.

2: Disconnect the power cable and take out the BIOS battery for about 10 minutes. Put the battery back, reboot and see if there is any response from the BIOS. If there are any beep sounds please mention them.

3: If the video card is an add-on and if there is another, onboard, connection, unplug the power, take out the add-on video card, connect the old monitor to the on-board card and reboot.

If nothing help then I think that your father in law will be better off taking the computer to a good lab. The reason is that to pinpoint the problem they will have to replace suspected parts with good ones, for test purposes. If he tries to do the diagnosis by himself he may end up spending a lot of money for parts that he doesn't really need.

I am curious about the problem and wonder who burned whom, the monitor burned the computer or vice versa.

[Dolomieu]

Skeptic,

Thanks for the very rapid reply!! I will definitely report back with any info I come up with. I had suggested he try resetting the BIOS but I haven't heard back from him whether or not it helped. I did not think to try removing the video card. Not sure if he has onboard video but if nothing else I can send him an old video card to try. Thanks, I will keep you posted!

[Dolomieu]

Turns out it was the video card. He was able to get a loaner video card and as soon as it was installed the comp worked just fine. So still don't know if it was the problem all along or if the first monitor caused it to go bad. But the replacement card seemed to fix all the issues. Now it is just a matter of finding a decent (and cheap) AGP card for him that will work well with the 24" monitor.

Thanks for the advice!