Baffling Multimonitor Issue

A

AAAintheBeltway

One of my older rigs runs an AGP vid card as the primary and two PCI cards as secondaries. XP Pro o/s. Crude but effective.

Monday when I started up, none of the three monitors would come out of sleep mode. Replacing cards did nothing. The crazy thing is it will work on the AGP card if the PCI cards are removed and, after fiddling with the BIOS(a techie friend did it), will work on the two PCI cards if the AGP is removed. Using the PCI cards on another machine with another AGP primary, the same problem was observed, ie monitors would not come out of sleep mode.

Going a little crazy here and would appreciate any assistance. Thanks.
 
I formerly used a similar setup with video cards... I never experienced it, but I vaguely remember something about a problem with waking up from 'sleep' mode...

Suggest you try getting along without it...
 
Having a similar problem now with 2 of my 4 Samsung 21" monitors. I keep wondering whether the problem is the monitors or the card(s).

Anyway, what I do is cycle the power on the 2 "sleepy" monitors via the switch on the strip, since the power switch on the monitors do not function when this happens. So far this fix works, although it may take 3-4 tries before they light up.
 
Quote from BigFunky:

Have you tried removing only one of the PCI cards?

Try it with each of them - one of them may be faulty.
More...

Did it, no change. They will work without the AGP card installed.

I'm beginning to think the PCI cards are blocking the wake up signal but why all of a sudden after working fine for a long time?
 
Quote from AAAintheBeltway:

Did it, no change. They will work without the AGP card installed.

I'm beginning to think the PCI cards are blocking the wake up signal but why all of a sudden after working fine for a long time?
More...
Did a recent Windows Update change your Power Control setup?

Check Control Panel ---> Power Options
 
You said it is an old rig. When was the last time you changed the CMOS battery? You seem to be experiencing some sort of motherboard configuration/resource failure, or possibly a power supply no longer suppling steady voltage to power all your installed peripherals.

Stranger things have happened. The above allows for an inexpensive and simple test/solution.

Osorico
 
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