Electrical Surge

[cdb31977]

Recently we had a 4 hour time period where the electricity would surge every 15 to 20 minutes or so. After a few surges I suddenly realized I should check my pc to make sure everything was kosher. Unfortunately not. My monitor now shows a solid black screen but my pc seems to run normal. Thinking it must be the video card, i unplugged the agp video card connection and plugged in the onboard vga. Nothing. I hooked up the vga cord directly to my laptop, nothing. Reseated the ram into a different slot, nothing. I've slowly run out of ideas and am fearing the harddrive crash. Which would really suck because i'm been fairly negligent and haven't backed up my Wife's data in several years. Mine's fine.

My system is home grown and I built it about 3 or 4 years ago. PC Chips Micro ATX mother board, socket-478 P4.

Any help on the situation would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

[b1gapl]

Hey cdb31977

Have you tried connecting your monitor to another computer, to see if the monitor is the one having problems?

 

[cdb31977]

Yes. I've actually got the monitor hooked up to my laptop now and it is working fine.

 

[b1gapl]

Maybe, try another graphic card?

 

[cdb31977]

Well, I tried the onboard video with the same result. The weird thing is, the monitor power light remains green when typically it turns orange when a video connection isn't established. For both the agp and onboard video.

Also, no erroneous beeps or anything on start up. Don't see bios or anything.

 

[b1gapl]

But what about another graphic card?...if you have one.

 

[viper_992000]

i had a similar problem where nothing would come up on my monitor and it turned out to be the power supply on my pc was bad. i changed the power supply and now everything works fine

 

[cdb31977]

Unfortunately I only have the one. Do you think it would be the harddrive? Seems like if it was I would at least see the bios screen with the MBR error message or something. Maybe there's a jumper to turn on the onboard video. Although it seems like I made that change in bios.

 

[cdb31977]

Viper 992000 - Was your pc also running fine just no picture? I guess i could order a power supply and check that.

 

[viper_992000]

i dont know to me it sounds like the power supply because my computer did the same thing it came on and everything but i heard no beeps or anything like it was starting up i would recommend maybe buying a new power supply ebay has some pretty cheap ones for around $20 for a 400 watt power supply