VO-BB - 19 YEARS OLD!

Dave · Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 10:48 am Post subject: LCD Monitor Burnout - Who Knew?

My LCD monitor wouldn't "wake up" this morning.

Hmmmm... that's strange I say to myself. The power is on. So I turn it off and back on and the screen appears for a fraction of a second and then goes black again. ???

Beyond me...so, I call my computer guy and he says, "Time to buy a new one." Huh? I've never replaced a monitor in my entire life...I must have gotten a bad one, I say. "Nope, if its 3 years old its worn out." "I get several calls like this every week..." He went on to explain that LCD monitors have a flourescent tube that have a 20,000 hour life and when they burn out that's it.

I've never known anyone that has had this happen...anyone here experience this? Just curious.

Dave
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Jeffrey Kafer · Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 10:50 am Post subject:

Happened to me about a month ago. Sucks big time. I had a bit of warning, though, because the screen would flicker once in a while for a few weeks.

And for what it's worth, LCD's do not have a picture tube. They wouldn't be flat if they did.
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Audiogal · Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 11:01 am Post subject:

Yep. Happened to me, too, on a previous computer. I did have the flickering & wavy images for a few weeks before it happened.

<looking suspiciously at my 4 yr. old monitor now...>
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Yoda117 · Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 12:39 pm Post subject:

Actually, this could be caused by a few things, "wearing out" being the least of them.

Somehow I doubt that you've had the monitor on 24/7 for the past 3 years (which is about 26,000 hours).

Let me ask you this... when the LCD is on, do you have images that can barely be seen, but are so dark that it's obviously unusable?

If so, then the issue is probably the backlight in the LCD (yes, they do have a bulb, just not the kind most folks are used to seeing). In that part, the guy is probably right (it's the most common issue), although despite what the tech said, they can be replaced quite readily.

I had this happen to my laptop a couple of years back, and that's what the cause was. I'd get a normal image for a few minutes and then it'd go dark on me (if I was lucky enough to have it work for that long... usually a second or two was the best I'd get).

There are some other issues that can cause this to happen and are worth checking out, a bad video card or a damaged mobo PCI/AGP slot can also cause this to happen. That said, it's usually caused by heat damage that's occurred to the specific components (which will ovbviously need to be replaced).

FWIW, the backlight in an LCD costs less than $100 and can easily be replaced by someone who knows how. Depending on how much you spent on the monitor, and whether or not it's under warranty should be factors as to whether or not it's worth replacing the monitor vs. going to slickdeals and waiting for Dell to have an LCD monitor blowout (you can occasionally get 20 - 22" monitors for about $300 when they do).
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TheVoiceOfBob · Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 1:57 pm Post subject:

I help support about 5000 PCs and 500 Macs on campus and it's still a pretty rare thing to have an LCD panel fail. It happens much less than the tubes before.

Yoda's words are wise. I agree with everything he says.

The other possibility could be the power. Some have a seperate brick that could have gone bad, but if it's internal, you're better off replacing it. If you get nothing at all, then it could be a power issue. Many times the power light is also a sync indicator. For example, it will turn GREEN when you first turn it on, then go YELLOW until it receives a video signal. Then it will go solid GREEN. Test it by turning on the monitor w/o the PC on. If it turns GREEN then YELLOW, and stays that way, then turn on the PC and see if it syncs up and turns GREEN. If it does that, then it is most likely the backlight. If not, if it never syncs up, then there is something else more serious wrong.

Of course if no light at all, power is a problem.

One other thing. Does your LCD accept both DVI (white connector) and the VGA (blue) connectors? I have seen times where the analog (VGA) portion is bad, but the LCD will work fine with the digital (DVI) input. That is, if your PC has the DVI connector on the video card.

For anyone, it is always going to be better to use the DVI cable if at all possible. Less possiblity of interference, and refesh rates become a moot issue. Always go DVI unless you can't.

I hope any of this helped.
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Yoda117 · Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 8:37 pm Post subject:

Dave · Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 10:22 pm Post subject:

Thanks guys...

Several ideas that I will need to check out before I buy a replacement. (The tech did say he could replace the "tube" but that it would nearly be as much as a new monitor).
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Yoda117 · Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 10:40 pm Post subject:

depends on where you have it done, but should be less than $150 for work and materials.

again though, there's a couple of issues that are not LCD related that you need to deal with.

Also there's the question as to whether or not it's something altogether different...

hear me out

there's a way to turn off your video card's ability to output to the LCD monitor, which would have the exact same effect as the LCD starting up for a second and then turning off.

A lot of graphics cards have the ability to do this through the drivers (so that you can use an LCD projector or separate monitor separately from your main LCD (this is especially true with laptops... most even have the symbol for the operation on the keyboard, CTRL-F4), Now obviously the graphics card companies thought ahead that people would accidentally be turning off the LCDs all the time, so they wrote their drivers to not allow the application to re-route it's output.

Here's the rub... a lot of computer manufacturers re-wrote the drivers and left that little bit of code out for one reason or another. So it's not out of the realm of possibility that this is what is causing the issue, but I would call it a long shot.
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Donovan · Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 7:35 am Post subject:

Thanks Yoda for allowing me to feel dumb on a Saturday morning. Frown

Every now and then, my monitor does this white-screen flicker thing but it stops on its own after about 2-3 mins. But it hasn't done it in about a month. (of course it will start immediately after I post this) And it only happens when I first turn the monitor on. Like it needs to heat up or something.

Thoughts?
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