S2209W, power LED flashes before coming up

Question

Hello, I have an oldie, but up until lately, a goodie, the Dell S2209W monitor. I believe it's the first 1080 capable monitor from Dell when I first bought it in 2009. Been a great workhorse. Bought it when I bought a brand new Dell Studio XPS 435T desktop that same year, running Vista (yes, that OS) but never did upgrade it to 7 later on and the original AMD graphics card, capable of HD. When that card went in 2015, I replaced it with the Nvidia GeForce 610 GT graphics card, which now lives on in a refurbished Dell Optiplex 9020 SFF desktop, running Windows 10 Pro when the Studio XPS died in 2019 when the original hard drive goes. At the time, the poor old original Dell had much else replaced but the power supply, the HD and memory/CPU so it was time to move on. Anyway, repurposed the larger 22' Dell monitor, the Nvidia card, and then moved into the bedroom the Dell IN1910N 19' monitor beside it and put the S2209W to DVI, the IN1910N to VGA as that's all it had, running natively at their recommended resolutions, S2209W at 1920x1080, the IN1910N at 1280x720. The smaller monitor was hooked up to a secondary XP box in the living room for audio capturing and it now sports a very old 17' NEC LED 4:3 monitor and brought in the IN1910N into the office to run with the S2209W. All ran great until a few weeks ago when the S2209W began having an issue. I power down the monitors at night when going to bed, but leave the computer itself running, never going to sleep. In the morning, turn on both monitors, both come up, but now, the S2209W sits there, dark, LED power light blinks for at least 2 minutes, until the blue Dell logo comes up, then a second later, the image appears from the graphics card. The image looks great still and the power LED stays lit. Now, it seems to be getting a bit worse, as it seems to take a little longer to come up. Before all this, the lock/unlock would cycle and eventually disappear. That is hardly the case, and I was able to make certain it was unlocked for the menu functions. This morning (11/22/22) power LED blinked, then stopped, but was not looking at the monitor when the blue Dell logo popped up, if it did so, LED stopped flashing, but the screen remained black. A wiggle of the mouse didn't initiate a change. So I turned off, then on the monitor and it flashed 2-3 times, then saw the blue Dell logo, and the image came up. What I've done. checked the DVI cable to ensure it was tight, seemed to at first, including the power cord, but moving the monitor around didn't cause a loose connection so that was out. I did find a VGA cable I had laying around and an VGA to DVI adapter and swapped the video cable, No difference, LED flashed at least 2 minutes before image appears. Then went into the menu and set it from auto to VGA, no change there either. So the ONLY other thing is the drivers for this old monitor and will any of it run on Windows 10? Or do you have any idea what may be at issue inside? I know this monitor is old, 13 years old, and has lots of hours on it but once the image comes up, the display is bright, clear and stable. Thanks! John.

DELL-Chris M · Answer

Does the disconnected from all video cables Self-Test and Built-in Diagnostics run and pass? See page 28 in the online User's Guide.

ciddyguy · Answer

I just did the tests and here is what I got. The VGA dialog box came up when I unplugged the monitor from the PC. At first, I had it set to VGA, but it did reset back to auto, and when I plug in the monitor to the PC, it detected the video signal right away, the amber LED goes white.

If I turn off, then right back on the monitor via the power button, it comes right back up, otherwise it will blink the power LED until it shows the Dell logo, then the image pops up about 30 seconds later.

Everything else seems to be fine.

DELL-Chris M · Answer

I would not be using any cable converters. I would be testing by themselves a DVI to DVI cable and VGA to VGA cable. Do so on multiple PC.

ciddyguy · Answer

Realized just today that I need to redo my reply for 11/22.

I did the tests as mentioned and what I did was I had a VGA cable, and an adapter that converts VGA to DVI in my cable box and connected the monitor to the PC. Previously, it was running off of the DVI cable when the problem began with the LED power light blinking upon turn on until the blue Dell logo pops up and the light goes steady on, then about a second later, goes blank, then the image appears of successful, or it'll blink a time or two, Dell logo etc until successful. Most of the time, this occurs at least once, if not twice before successfully turning on.

Once on, the monitor is steady as a rock, image looks great, with good brightness and no abnormalities, unlike the old NEC 17" LED monitor that is older (and 4:3) that has developed 2 vertical lines through it on one side of the image, otherwise, it works fine and is not used on a primary PC, just hooked up to an older eMachines that is as old as the monitor, running XP that I use for audio capturing.

I did the tests as suggested and no difference. The monitor still wakes up in the morning after being off all night blinking until it finally wakes up and shows an image.

From what I got, the self test did pass, as the cable detection test seems to work? I got the VGA cable is not connected or something like that. The monitor was set to auto, I took it off to VGA, no change.

I did run the diagnostic test, and it seems to be fine.

Again, monitor is still behaving as if difficulties turning on.

Monitors

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