Very unusual PC problem - Plugging out mic from PC messed up the monitor!

FutureGuy

Hi all,
My brother is after suffering a very unusual problem this evening. I told him I'd consult the good people of the boards comp/tch forum to see if anyone has a clue...we certainly don't.

I asked him to e-mail me the details...can anyone help? EDIT: My brother has an update below (evamonkey)



I unplugged my microphone and the screen went pure black, bar a vertical bar on the right side which is near black.

Worried i restarted my pc and thought the problem was gone, as the initial abit screen comes up perfectly, as does the bios and even the black windows XP loading screen. However at the end of that loading screen instead of going to the blue windows login panel it flashes to the previously mentioned black screen.

the near black bar brightens and darkens in response to monitor brightness adjustment. However the rest of the screen remains pitch dark.

I can still access bios but that is about it.

If anyone has any ideas on how to troubleshoot this or any idea of what the cause might be i would appreciate it.

In addition, when booted on a friends monitor everything works perfectly. Ruling out a physical problem with the graphics card? Does this mean plugging out a microphone has somehow made my graphics drivers not recognize my monitor. If so i am surprised .

IrishB.ie

If he has access to another monitor, I presume he has access to his friends PC. First I'd try his monitor on his friends PC. If all that is ok, boot his own PC into safe mode (press F8 when the aBit logo disappears). If that works then reboot and again press F8 but this time try 'Last known good configuration'. Failing that, if the monitor has worked on his friends PC, go back again into safe mode and try adjusting the refresh rate for the monitor.

hearny

Sounds like the display settings have been changed if it works on another monitor.

The bios and windows boot logo are low resolution before windows loads and displays at a higher res.

Use the monitor that worked to lower the resolution, go as low as you can then switch the monitors and increase it one or 2 steps at a time.

Keep the other monitor at hand incase it happens again while finding the optimum resolution.

evamonkey

I am the brother in question. Thanks for the replies guys.

I will try those tonight when i have access to a second pc.

In terms of what happened since the topic was made but i had not been able to see replies, here is a rundown.


I connected the pc to a HDTV
It booted correctly.

While connected to the hdtv i uninstalled/reinatalled my graphics card drivers and set it at a lower widescreen resolution to match tv while i was using it.

I then powered down and reconnected to my original monitor and it booted correctly to windows much to my relief, but with further more interesting complications.

The aspect ratio was still set to widescreen and thus was not showing correctly so i went to set it to my default 1600 x 1200. On applying this the monitor blacked out to the initial problem of 'the screen went pure black, bar a vertical bar on the right side which is near black.'

Since the changes has not been saved the monitor auto reverted to the setting which worked.

Using this as a safe way to test i tried numerous resolutions and aspect ratios. The results showed that rather than being based on resolution, different results seemed to come from the different aspect ratios or were simply random. Some very high resolutions would work but the resulting image would be distorted , no 4:3 resolutions would work above a very low resolution. Certain widescreen resolutions would work and others would show the black screen mentioned previously but with a different sized grey area.

As a final step last night a set the machine to go back a week via system restore, and the result was the black screen after the windows loading page.

As the final icing on the cake, the brother loaned me a monitor so i can test this stuff easier. I powered up the pc ( still affected by the system restore to my default settings) and it booted perfectly to 1600 x 1200, ruling out a physical problem with the graphics card or system (in my head).

The system restore and previous uninstall/ reinstall of graphics drivers rules out software problems ( in my head at least)

I am beginning to wonder is the monitor, a 19 inch Dell UltraScan 1600HS has some kind of software built into it that may have gone bad. But if so, how would pulling a mic out on the pc result in a physical or software problem in the monitor. In my brain this is like turning on a CD player resulting in a train derailing on the other side of the planet.

When i have access to a second pc again i will try hooking it up to the monitor that seems to be the centre of this.

If it wont do higher resolutions or display aspect rations correctly on another pc then it narrows it down to a software or hardware problem within the monitor somehow.

If it does work with the other PC then i am totally stumped, as that clears the monitor hardware, while the system working perfectly with another monitor now shows the system hardware is fine, and in theory the system restore i did to a week back should have ruled out any errors in the system software.

Will post any further test results as i do them. Thanks again for the help.

FutureGuy

Hmm...150 views and no more replies...It seem's everyone is as stumped as we are.

Anyone care to speculate/share wild guesses? :pac: