[JLC]

Hey All,

This issue first appeared a couple weeks ago with my wife's desktop computer we usually leave running 24/7. Its running on Windows 7. (Do a hard boot every once in a while) where the monitor just didnt seem to wake up after the computer had been sitting idle for a given amount of time. It is an older Dell S2309Wb monitor where power button stayed orange instead of turning white like it usually does when the computer wakes from sleep mode.

Now all these trial and error testing has taken a couple weeks because I'd try one thing and give up and leave it alone for a few days before I tried anything else...so the details below are an accumulation of the things i've tried on and off over the last couple weeks.

At first, I thought it was a computer problem, so I rebooted a few times (unfortunately the only way I could reboot it was to hold the power button down for 5 seconds to do a a full shut down). It would turn on and I could hear the computer itself working, the monitor would come out of sleep mode and show the message "Entering Power Save Mode" and then go back to sleep (or power save mode I guess).

Then I tried to unplug the monitor cables (DVI connections) and replug them in and that didn't seem to work. I tried plugging it into both the DVI connections on the graphics card but that didn't change anything.

I then decided to try a different S2309Wb monitor (i use one as my secondary screen with my laptop) and then it seemed to work fine so I thought maybe I had fixed it. It would boot up, i would see the loading screens and windows would load up fine and I could use the computer. I went into the settings and set it so that the computer would never go to sleep, hoping this would prevent the issue from occurring again. This seemed to fix it as the computer was usable for the next few days.

Then one day day, I turned the computer on in the morning but didnt actually get to use it as things got busy with the kids. Went back to the computer later in the evening and the windows login screen was showing as normal. But then my keyboard and mouse were frozen and did not work. So again I had no choice but to do a hard restart. And then when I did this hard restart, I could again hear the computer running and loading up windows, and actually heard the welcome sounds (i dont think i had the speakers turned up previously which is why I didnt notice whether if windows was loading property before). However, the screen stayed in that "sleep mode" the entire time the computer was loading (didnt see any loading screens or anything). I entered my password and could also hear windows log in as per normal (screen is still sleeping). I didnt know what to do at this point so I used the keyboard to shut down the computer (windows key, right arrow, enter). I could hear the computer shut down as per normal, and then power off. All the while, the monitor stayed in sleep mode.

Anyway i'm totally lost as to what the issue is.

I'm going to try a different DVI cable tonight to see if that works, but i am not sure if that will fix it, and if it does, what are the chances it is the actual fix and not another temporary fix where the issue comes back again a few days later.

Could this be a graphics card issue maybe? Anyone know how to check if this is the issue?

Has anyone else experienced this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!