Determine if you are having problems with your monitor or video card in...

Many people have problems determining if their monitor is bad or their video card is bad. One good way to test this is by swapping out your monitor with a friend, co-worker, or family member with a known good monitor. You can do this with either your computer tower or your monitor. Follow the two steps below:
1. Take your computer tower and plug it up to a known good monitor. If the computer boots up with no problems and you are able to see everything on the known good monitor, then your monitor is bad.
2. Take a known good monitor and plug in to your computer system. If the computer boots up and you are still having problems and getting a black screen or some message saying "no signal" then your are having problems with your video card.

Some common symptoms of a monitor going bad are as follows:
1. A humming or buzzing noise coming from your monitor.
2. Picture fades in and out.
3. Colors appear in various places on your monitor screen that normally would not be there. Most common colors presented are red, green, or a mixture of the two.
4. Picture presenting either light or dark and will not change no matter how much you change the color or tint setting.
5. Lines appearing on the monitor screen. These will look like the lines on a bad television.
6. Monitor takes longer than normal to present picture. This time can vary depending on how old your monitor is and how far into the malfunction phase it is.

Since your monitor works off the same principles as your television set, most the time it will present with the same symptoms as a television going bad. I hope this helps in your troubleshooting process to determine if your video card or your monitor is the one causing the problems. These symptoms apply to the regular monitor only and not necessarily an LCD monitor.