My computer is about to blow up

[Meowster]

Hi guys,

Yesterday I returned from a week abroad and, when I turned on my PC, the monitor displayed a "no signal input" error. No matter what I did, it seemed that the monitor just would not realize the PC was on. Anyhoo, by sheer luck I happened to unplug the mouse. Somehow, the monitor went on. wtf?

It seems that, if my (serial) mouse is plugged in, the monitor won't work at all! However, there are no problems with my USB mouse. Furthermore, even when the mouse is unplugged, the screen  is entirely pink anyway (and slightly fuzzy, and I think it's getting worse).

If I turn on the PC with the mouse plugged into the serial port, and I press the OFF button, it instantly turns off. However, if I turn on the PC WITHOUT the mouse plugged in, it takes the ordinary five-seconds to shut down, leading me to believe this is a serious fuck up and not just the monitor failing or something...

I took a screenshot and sent it to somebody, they said the colours looked perfectly normal, so I assume this rules out the graphics card as part of the problem. 

The monitor has an independent power source, the computer is about four or five years old... any ideas what's wrong? I think it may be time to buy a new PC....

[Meowster]

Also, does anybody have any idea on how I can ease the pain of this screen until I can afford to get a new PC? If you have no idea on how to fix the problem or what it might be...

[InCreator]

Just a guess, but mouse may be faulty and cause short circuit.

Also, check if you don't have heavy magnets anywhere near computer, like big speakers, subwoofer, etc.

Checking monitor cables could be neccessary too. I had some screen trouble in past when some cat fur or dust got into monitor port, which caused short circuit and weird display problems.

[LimpingFish]

It could be the a breakdown between the serial port itself and the motherboard. Bad connection thats causing a short. Is the serial port near the monitor port?

[Meowster]

Not really, no... in fact, the USB ports which work just fine, are located directly beneath the serial ports, and between the serial and monitor port.

Also, why is the effing monitor tinted pink?

[LGM]

It may be pink because the color setting on the monitor itself is set to 6500K. Try to see if you can find a color setting and change it to 9300K.

Also, try degaussing too o_0

In your display settings, find the monitor tab and change the refresh rate to 75 or 85hz (if possible.)

If it's already at either, switch it to a lower one and switch back.

You may have been attacked by some sort of magnetic field.

[SSH]

Have you recently placed any large magnets near the screen, like, for example, a loudspeaker? THese can mess up monitors bigtime, including colours

Also, check the pins on the monitor connector an case they are bent, a gentle nudging with long-nosed pliers can fix bent pins. See if you can borrow someone else's monitor cable and insert the cable gently.

I assume its a CRT and not LCD: check that the subpixel rendering in Windows is turned off on a CRT: that can make things look like they have pink edges

[LimpingFish]

That mouse thing has me stumped. 

Any recent hardware changes?

PCI cards?

BTW: Of course your monitor could just be dead. Suddenly.  :o

[LGM]

I've had two large 8 ohm speakers next to my monitor and I was baffled as to why my monitor liked to fade in and out once and awhile.. Now I know why. Thank goodness the monitor is still okay.

[Squinky]

I had that some prob with my monitor and speakers.....was pretty worriesome...

[IM NOT TEH SPAM]

It's funny you post this just as my older brother's computer is ready to blow.

The moniter's color is probably just old age--I have an old crappy moniter that messes up the colors alot; it's either got a very blue tint or a very bright tint (no, nothing to do with bright/contrast, my moniter can't even define those  ).

You know, I really wouldn't mind if my moniter exploded, as long as it doesn't damage anything else.  I hate this piece of crap.

[Meowster]

I've tried all the things you guys said, of course... no, no magnetic things around, I'm not silly...

I believe that the problem is coming from the actual computer, not the monitor though... especially since the monitor is fine when plugged into my dads PC

So what went wrong eh?

[edmundito]

I have a few questions

1) Is your mouse serial or ps2? I haven't seen serial mouses since like 1995.

2) Do you have a video card or is the monitor conected to a slot where everything else like USB and so on is located?

[Squinky]

I had a weird problem like yours when I bought some bad ram....Prolly has not your issue, but have you tried resaeting all your cards and ram....never hurts....

[LGM]

It might be your video card then.. And if you have integrated video... God save your soul.

[shbaz]

Have you used the serial mouse before? Has anyone tampered with the BIOS settings?

I used to have conflicts with seemingly unrelated things like that (mouse and video card, sound card and video card). There are some channel settings in the BIOS, they're called IRQ ports. If two things are set to the same channel then only one will work.

If I remember right, you can only set these in the BIOS but I remember being able to view which was set to what in Windows 3.1. Yes, it's been that long since I've had to mess with them.

[Meowster]

I can't believe I keep saying serial mouse... I mean PS2 mouse, sorryryryryry.

My card isn't integrated, no.

How do you reset all the cards/ram?

[TheYak]

Inability to detect a video signal is a sign of hardware conflict, dying hardware, or improperly installed hardware. 

If it's getting a signal out of range (like 1024x768x32bx80 hz on a screen that supports only 70hz at that res), that'd be the most likely culprit if it happened after the OS/game is loaded.

I believe the recommendation to "reset all the cards/ram" is to re-seat them.  Provided you feel comfortable with doing so, it's an excellent suggestion.  In particular, pulling the video card out and re-seating that has a good chance of helping.  If the RAMs clips are retaining it well, then it's probably best to leave those along unless the video card re-seating doesn't work.   You're down to just basic hardware troubleshooting here, so it depends upon how much time/effort you want to expend and how deep you want to dig. 

My instinct says that Yutzster's a friggin' nutcase and she psychotically bent the pins on her videocard.  She should probably check the card's output and make sure all pins are 1) present and 2) parallel.

[shbaz]

Well, since this is a directly correlated problem and removing the PS/2 mouse fixes the problem, I maintain that there is a hardware conflict, specifically probably with the IRQ addresses, given my past experience with the same sort of problem. They're automatically set, and automatically prioritized, so if you'd never used the mouse before or even used a different mouse before this one you wouldn't have run into the problem before.

It's not terribly hard, go to the BIOS by pressing delete or possibly F10 at startup, scroll through the menu choices until you see something about IRQ, and check to make sure no numbers are the same.

[TheYak]

Well, if there is a conflict (assuming the board doesn't have a short somewhere) it would have to be IRQ since there's no DMA assignment for PS/2 and the IO address range is completely different from video.    The BIOS/POST IRQ listings will have little bearing as most modern BIOSes allow for Plug N Play OSes.  You could try seeing what IRQ gets assigned to video when the system does boot and make an exception for that, but the problem would likely resurface as the video and PS/2 mouse would get assigned the same IRQ once more. 

If the problem  can be fixed in BIOS, it's more likely due to some antiquated setting that needs adjustment, like PCI Palette Snooping or Video/BIOS caching.  It may help to make sure it's set to boot from the applicable card-type (Initialize AGP if it's an AGP card or PCI for PCI cards (ditto for PCIe)).   Another thing that often fouls up hardware settings is Enable USB Legacy support (should be disabled unless you need USB support other than in a PnP GUI OS)  This causes some shared resource allocation among the south-bridge/PCI devices.   

XP will assign IRQs on a whim, despite what your BIOS has.  You can set exceptions so that it can't utilize certain IRQs but this has limited usefulness.   Regardless, IRQ-sharing is commonplace now and a PS/2 & Video share wouldn't likely incapacitate the card, particularly since the problem (from what I understand) begins during POST (before XP has a change to muck with hardware). 

Shbaz: Note that the she said the system has a pink tint even when the PS/2 mouse is removed.  The various other problems scream hardware defect/misalignment  rather than resource conflict.  Hell, you couldn't even eliminate PSU failing at this point.