Monitor Display Has Turned Red!

[flloyd]

Hello my computer started crashing yesterday for seemingly no reason every five minutes. I tried doing a fresh install of Windows XP on a formatted drive and it continued to crash. Now all of a sudden my screen is red, even during the POST the bios is red. I know that it is not my monitor's fault because its status message still can show non-red colors. I really don't know what could be causing this. I did take the fan off of my ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon because I was told that it wasn't really needed. I have run it like this for about a year with no problems so I wouldn't think that it was this, especially since why would this cause Windows to crash?

If anyone has any ideas I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you very much.

 

[SuperPickle]

Two things and this is only a true guess. I had a monitor that crapped out on me. It too was mostly red (and yellow) because some cold-solder points gave up. I fixed it by taking apart the monitor and retouching the solder points on the tube. Well, it was fixed for about a day until the red gave out and the whole thing was blue. I tried again, couldn't fix it and trashed the mon.

My other F up was when I ran a Ti200 without a fan. It ran a long time until one day my side intake wasn't running and the card overheated. The card kinda functioned, but there were (major) display errors and I trashed the card.

So, does your display show red, blue and yellow? If so, that might be good in that your monitor may still be good. Bad news may be that your card went to the great hardware graveyard in the sky and would explain the OS crashes.

 

[Bacinator]

Just because your monitor can show non-red colors does not mean it is not suspect.
Your computer crashing every 5 minutes makes your monitor not suspect.

This is a way off guess considering you didnt post your system specs, but it wouldn't be surprising if you have a heat problem. And taking a fan off of something which comes with a fan, in my experience, voids the warantee. Run the computer with the case open and see:

Do the problems continue (crashing i mean, the red may be actual damage to the video card, which processes the info the computer gives it to provide a display). with the case open (letting heat vent if it is a heat problem).
Are any other fans in your system no longer spinning?
On the vid card, or any motherboard components, are thier darker spots which may show evidence of burn/heat?
Right after a crash, go into BIOS, and check your temps if you do not have a desktop temperature monitoring program. (The temps should show next on the same page where you set the shutdown temp limits)
Is the board, chip, or any motherboard components or fans covered in dust?

Checking the big dangerous stuff is good to get it out of the way. If opening the case while running does not help, and there are no signs of burning anywhere physically or in the BIOS, then you may not have a heat problem, which is progress towards a solution. The quickest heat test will be opening the case and not seeing your symptoms anymore (except for the red, which would possibly be perm damage).

Keep in mind, a steak doesn't cook through in a minute, and overcooking it may not burn it, but it would be dry and unappealing. It is possible that you fried something... But the symptoms seem like seperate faults... So you may have more than one problem, and heat (especially with a cooling problem like a fan stopping) would affect memory, hard drives, pci cards, and other electronic eq.

 

[Codewiz]

For the red monitor stuff make sure your cable in securely attached otherwise if a few pins come out it could result in a red tint.

 

[flloyd]

Okay, thanks for the replies so far. I've made sure that the cables are tight and clean so that shouldn't be a problem. I've also opened up the case in my cold room and that doesn't help either. I'm starting to think that the video card must have just got too hot at one point nad now it is fried thus outputting a red signal and causing the computer to not go for any longer than five minutes. I'm going to go get a new video card and pray that that fixes it.

Damn there goes a $150 card.

P.S. Here are my specs.

KDS 195e 19" monitor
Antec 300 Watt PS
Duron 600
Gigabyte 7VTXH
512 MB DDR
7200 40 GB WD
CD-R/W
DVD

 

[Bacinator]

Yeah, buy or borrow a cheepo vid card. That would at least tell you if your card is the problem, before you go and drop money on a card you may not need.

 

[Bacinator]

Oh yeah... And you didn't mention anything about fans and thier status, burn marks, dust presence, or if the comp felt hot while running open. You said "I've also opened up the case in my cold room and that doesn't help either", does that mean the red is still there, or that the computer still restarts every few minutes? You also did not post temps.

Simple evasive responses denote a person looking for a certain answer, and dismissing proposed possibilities.

 

[flloyd]

Well I just got a cheap card from Circuit City and it does the same thing. Hmmm, I wonder what it could be. I'll try the monitor cables again. I sure hope its not the monitor itself beacuse I can't afford a new one right now. The monitor does show colors though when it has the "self-test" screen bouncing around.

 

[flloyd]

Originally posted by: Bacinator
Oh yeah... And you didn't mention anything about fans and thier status, burn marks, dust presence, or if the comp felt hot while running open. You said "I've also opened up the case in my cold room and that doesn't help either", does that mean the red is still there, or that the computer still restarts every few minutes? You also did not post temps.

Simple evasive responses denote a person looking for a certain answer, and dismissing proposed possibilities.

Sorry for not being more specific. I have a Panaflo installed in the PS and one on the CPU with a ALPHA PAL 8045T. They are both operating smoothly for over a year. The inside of the case was very clean with only a little dust. According to the MB the CPU is at about 35C. With the case open and a new card the display is still red and crashes every minute or two. I usually am not even able to get into Windows.

Thank you very much for your help so far.

 

[Bacinator]

Because the computer restarts by itself, and at the same time the "red" problem showed up, it may not be the monitor.

Some possibilities are:
Something is wrong with the cable, which would show different from what the monitor self display/test shows. Verify there are no bent pins on the connector. Sometimes they can be bent flush inside the connector.

The monitor cable may also be damaged internally, possibly from being crimped or stepped on. Try the monitor with another computer(also unlikely, because this would not cause your computer to restart).

Something (such as a foil run) may be damaged on the motherboard, which feeds the video card it's info.

Unlikely, but possible, that another faulty part is causing the problem, such as a damaged northbridge chipset.

Also unlikely, but still possible, is that maybe the video card slot is damaged somehow. Does the new vid card use the same slot?

The Giga-byte website shows there is a monitoring feature:
[/quote]H/W Monitoring
2 cooling fan connectors
System health status detect and report by BIOS
H/W detect & report power-in voltage, CPU voltage and CMOS battery status [/quote]

Do all of these readings read normal with the case closed, running in the same manner as before?
Please post temps (cpu and case temps) and voltages.

 

[flloyd]

Alright I found out the reason for my red monitor, it is the monitor's fault (or the cable). I remembered that my girlfriend's laptop has a monitor attachment so I tried it out and sure enough the screen was still red. Fortunately it is a KDS which has a pretty good warranty. I don't have my proof of purchase anymore but the warranty is good for three years from date of manufacture. I bought it in August 2000 so I nervously checked the back and whew!!, it was made in April 😀 . So all I have to do is call them tomorrow and arrange to get a new one (although I'm going to have to pay for shipping between NY and CA). Plus as a bonus I've read elsewhere in these forums that they are short on 19" CRTs so they have instead been offering 17" LCDs 🙂 .

Hopefully once I get my new monitor I can figure out what the heck is wrong with the rest of my computer. Thanks to everyone for the help.

 

[Bacinator]

Fedex ground is usually a decent price.