Hi all, I've been having this problem for quite a while, & it's persisted over 2 installs of Windows & 2 different video cards. I've been working with computers for most of my life but have never seen anything like this, & it's about to drive me crazy! My problem is this: After my machine boots into Windows, the monitor repeatedly blacks out for about 10-15 minutes, every 2 or 3 seconds. The PC is essentially useless while this is going on. After around 15 minutes, it stops & the computer works fine. I have reinstalled Windows, swapped video cards, played with BIOS settings, played with every video setting I could think of, etc.... it's a very frustrating problem! My rig is a Athlon XP 2400+ running at stock speed on an Asus A7N8X motherboard with 512 megs of DDR 266 RAM. I have an XFX GeForce 6200 AGP card installed. I thought this might be a conflict with the onboard video & my add-in card, but so far everything I've tried along those lines hasn't yielded any results. Hope someone else out there knows what is going on with my PC! Thanks for reading. hoplite

What kind of monitor? Have you tried a different monitor? If the monitor has an Auto button on it, try that.

"After my machine boots into Windows, the monitor repeatedly blacks out for about 10-15 minutes, every 2 or 3 seconds." Now how is this possible............huh ;-)

Hi Grok, (nice name, btw) sorry I didn't provide more details... I am at work & I can't remember offhand who the monitor maker is... it's a fairly old LCD... I'm thinking maybe a Samsung Viewmaster. I have tried the auto button, & I have used this monitor on a different PC with no problem, but I've not yet tried a different monitor on this PC.

Nice catch, Sabertooth. Hehe. :-P I am a bonehead.... probably could have worded that better... every few seconds the monitor blacks out for a split second, & this goes on for about 15 minutes.

These symptoms are not typically caused by a bad video card, and since you've tried two video cards, that's obviously not the problem. It's also extremely unlikely improper drivers or corrupted drivers would cause these symptoms either - if that is even possible, you would likely have the problem all the time if that was the case. Try another monitor for a while - I suspect the problem will not appear. Your symptoms are probably caused by components in your old LCD monitor - probably the voltage invertor. If you didn't get the symptoms when you connected your old LCD monitor to another computer, perhaps you didn't try it for long enough. For some info about replacing a voltage inverter or backlight, and what some typical symptoms are, see response 5 in this: http://www.computing.net/hardware/w... Other possibilities? If you get the same symptoms with another monitor, failing or malfunctioning PSs are common - if the voltages put out by the PS are out of whack you can get all sorts of strange symptoms. Check your PS. See response 4 in this: http://www.computing.net/hardware/w... e.g. I've seen two examples where the PS produces too much voltage for a few minutes after you first boot, then the voltages stabilize to normal values after that. To catch that you may need to load a mboard monitoring utility in Windows that can run all the time and produce an alarm message and/or noise when the voltages (+3.3, +5, +12 volts) are out of whack.

I agree with the above. It's almost has to be a video card or monitor problem and you seemed to have eliminated the video card. Do yourself a favor BACKUP!