LCD monitor suddenly turns off

I have having trouble with my display. When I got home today, my monitor had the orange (standby) light on, instead of the blue light on. Moving the mouse, hitting the keyboard, etc did not cause it to wake up. I rebooted my computer, and a minute or so after booting, the monitor again went to standby. The computer was clearly still on, and windows still running, but the monitor got no signal.

I checked the connections between the monitor and video card, but they were fine. The cable looks fine.

I rebooted the computer, and instead of windows, used an Ubuntu bootable CD to boot into.
After a few minutes, the monitor again went to standby, and wouldn't wake up.

I opened my case, removed my video card, and inspected it. No obvious damage. The fan is spinning fine.

Once again, rebooted, this time into windows. The monitor stayed on long enough for me to load Speedfan. I watched the temp stay fine, about 41 C, which is normal for my card, and again it suddenly turned off.

So, what is likely the problem: Video Card, Monitor, Motherboard, something else?

My video card is an nvidia gts 250, asus dark knight 1GB edition.
My monitor is an Acer X223W.
My MB is an Asus, one of the P45 motherboards. I forget the model.

I am running Windows 7 64 bit, but I know it's not a Windows problem, as it happened from a Ubuntu CD as well. I believe that also rules out a driver problem.

Thanks for reading, and your help.

Steve

 

What about hooking the monitor to another system? Just to rule out that it may be damaged.

 

I could do that. I have a laptop I'm typing on now. I would need to buy a vga cord, but I could do it. I just figured it might be an obvious problem to someone else, and I wouldn't need to eexperiement.

 

I plugged the wife's macbook to my monitor, using the same DVI cable my PC had been using, and the monitor is fine.

I think the graphics card or mobo are the most likely problems now.

Any ideas?

 

I got impatient, and replaced the video card. It seems to have worked. Thanks for your help.

Steve

 

That's great!

But I got another idea - just out of curiosity - was the power cord properly attached to the video card? a 250 might just quite easily run out of juice if only supplied through the PCIE port it's plugged into. That's a bit far fetched, of course, but anyway

 

When I was replacing the card, I did check out the power cable, and it was connected fine.

The card I replaced it with did not require a power cable, so I guess the power cable might be the problem, but it seems less likely than the card itself failing.

I checked some reviews at newegg, and there are several other posts about this particular card dying on people after a short period of use. I guess I'm not alone.