Solved Black screen - not sure why

bigseb · Nov 30, 2023

Looking for some insight...

Working on my PC editing some photos, music playing too. Screen goes black but music is still playing in the background. I press Ctrl Alt Delete and it brings up the menu i.e. it shows on the screen. I select log out and the log in screens shows as normal.

I think maybe it needs a clean so I power off, unplug and open it up. Remove graphics card and memory and clean. Put it all together but now the screen gets no signal.

Open it up again and check everything's seated properly. Plug in and try again, still no signal on monitor.

PC appears to be running properly, just the screen isn't showing anything. For all I know it's waiting me to log-in.

Is this a failing graphics card? Not sure because it worked fine after using ctrl alr delete to end the session. Stumped on this one. Any ideas what it might be?

Ghot · Nov 30, 2023

bigseb said:
Is this a failing graphics card?

The RAM probably needs re-seated, again. Use an LED flashlight. Make sure it's properly seated.
Otherwise... you need to double check all the graphics card and monitor connections as well.
And make sure it's fully re-seated.

bigseb · Nov 30, 2023

Ghot said:
The RAM probably needs re-seated, again. Use an LED flashlight. Make sure it's properly seated.
Otherwise... you need to double check all the graphics card and monitor connections as well.
And make sure it's fully re-seated.

Reseated everything. Now I get this:

Ghot · Nov 30, 2023

bigseb said:
Reseated everything. Now I get this:

Just press F1 to enter the BIOS (the Setup), and do nothing in there except hit the F10 key to save and exit.

Every now and then the BIOS glitches... that's the message you get when that happens.
F10 (from within the BIOS), should fix that and make your computer happy again.

Sometimes I'll get the "hit F1 to enter Setup" message after a power failure, for example.

bigseb · Nov 30, 2023

Ghot said:
Just press F1 to enter the BIOS (the Setup), and do nothing in there except hit the F10 key to save and exit.

Every now and then the BIOS glitches... that's the message you get when that happens.
F10 (from within the BIOS), should fix that and make your computer happy again.

Sometimes I'll get the "hit F1 to enter Setup" messages after a power failure.

That's what I did. The time was way off too. It then booted up ok but I couldn't log-in with my pin. Some error. Had to reset it via the Microsoft site. All working now. Thank you for your help.

Ghot · Nov 30, 2023

bigseb said:
That's what I did. The time was way off too. It then booted up ok but I couldn't log-in with my pin. Some error. Had to reset it via the Microsoft site. All working now. Thank you for your help.

Yeah... if the time/date is ever wrong in the BIOS make sure you set that correctly.
Lots of software, during install, records the time/date it was installed.
So if the BIOS time/date is wrong, it can break a lot of software, Windows included.

As for all the PIN stuff... I dunno... I don't use it.
I just use an old fashioned password.