Monitor Blinking On and Off

[Tetragrammaton]

I accidentally left my computer on when I left the house today. I came back 10 hours later to find the monitor blinking on and off. The green light was actually turning on and off; it was not just the screen. The blinks occurred every 3 seconds or so. When it was on, there would be a brief period where I could see what was onscreen (and so was able to shut off the computer).

If I pressed the power button while it was on, it would turn off and stop blinking. When I pressed it again, it began blinking again. I'm pretty sure it's not a power issue, and this has never happened before. Advice?

 

[Treripica]

I guess we'll start with information acquisition.

What kind of monitor do you have, and what kind of system do you have it connected to? Which OS are you running?

 

[Tetragrammaton]

It's a Viewsonic VX724 LCD Display, 17" gaming monitor. It's connected to a pretty high-powered SLI computer built by Cyberpower with a 535W PS. The computer and monitor are both one year old, and neither has had any significant problems during that time.

 

[Tetragrammaton]

Bump. No extra monitors in the house, frustration ensuing.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Treripica
I guess we'll start with information inquisition.

Fixed.

Seriously, your blinking could mean:
Video card failure.
Video cable failure.
LCD monitor failure.

The fastest way to diagnose it would be to take your PC and monitor to somebody who has a working PC and a working monitor. Swap out the four parts to see which one's broken.

In fact, if rebooting your PC, restarting the monitor, and checking the video cable connections doesn't fix it, there's not a lot of other options beyond swapping out parts.

 

[Tetragrammaton]

Y'know, that's a really good point. I should note that a picture does appear onscreen for milliseconds at a time when the monitor is blinking on and off, so video card/video cable failure seems unlikely. I guess I'll just try to replace the monitor.