[David2213]

Today i got a monitor from a friend that he had laying around his house. It's a Gateway 21 inch widescreen. http://www.gateway.com/accessories/p...78R.php?seg=hm
I got it home and plugged it in and the power button lit up but nothing on the screen, its just black. Is it dead or is there some way i can try to fix it?

Thanks for the help.

[ghporter]

Did you connect it to a video card of some kind? One that's in a running computer?

[David2213]

Yes, i plugged it into my mom's HP tower while both the screen and the tower were off and then turned them both on. The screen flashes the Gateway logo for less than a second and then stays black. I connected it using VGA cause thats all her computer has. To me it seems like there is some kind of short or something cause the light turns on and the logo does flash across the screen.


Thanks for the help.

[ghporter]

It sounds like the monitor wants to use some other input than the VGA. Is there a bunch of little alignment buttons somewhere on it? They should bring up th on screen menu system in the monitor and let you see whether it's looking for a specific input.

You could also go to Gateway's site and see if they have some knowledge base stuff on it.

[seanc]

Can you see any faint images on the screen?
My Dell LCD had a similar issue where one of the transformers on the backlight inverter had fried. The backlight would work for 2 seconds after powering it on, then stop, however you could still see a faint image of anything being displayed.
Replacing the inverter fixed the problem, I don't think it was cost effective but it enabled me to learn about things in the process which was more valuable to me.