Screen goes black to grey

Today I recieved a monitor from a friend. It is a HP vs19e, and he said it was broken. He had recently bought a new monitor, so he figured that I would like to fix it for myself. Anyways, when I tested the monitor, it blinked from black to grey every few seconds when the Video cord was plugged in. It never shows the Bios or the usual " No signal" My problem is not that of power like many others that have used this monitor.