Monitor loses signal on multiple workstations...any ideas?

[edmicman]

I have two Samsung Syncmaster 225BW widescreen 22in monitors, each hooked up to a HP DX5152 workstation, and both have a Radeon Express 200 video card. They've got XP Pro, .NET framework 2.0, and the latest catalyst drivers. BOTH are exhibiting the same problem:

Randomly, even if in use, the monitor will "shut off", and go into the auto method to try to find a signal. It looks like what would happen if you unplugged the monitor cable or something. The only fix is to reboot the PC. Nothing shows up as an error, in the event viewer, nothing. We're pretty much out of things to try, short of replacing the video cards next (I don't know, they might even be onboard chips?) but these are brand new monitors. Any ideas? Thanks for any help!

 

[TheStu]

The Radeon Express is an onboard chip, so you can add a card to it perhaps. You may want to check in the BIOS to see if there is any options for adding memory to the graphics cards, or anything like that. Have you been able to tell if the cutout is associated with processor or RAM intensive work? It is possible that if you are overworking the RAM and that is shared with the graphics card, so if HP did something squirrely with the setup, that is what may be causing the problems since it is a 22" monitor.

 

[edmicman]

Thanks for the reply! I'll check and see if it's happening when there's a lot of CPU activity or something. Is there a program or utility that I can run that will peg the CPU and RAM that I might try to test it with?

I think if it comes to it, we'll try replacing the video card rather than trying to add RAM...

 

[TheStu]

You could try Prime95, that will push the CPUs. You also may want to run MemTest86, if you bought the two workstations at the same time, it could be possible that HP got a bad batch of RAM and both of your machines got hit with it.