U2311h takes 1+min to turn on and menu button is permanently locked

Question

I started using my new U2311H last week. Yesterday, I noticed a really weird and annoying issue. I had my PC turned on, and turned off my monitor to keep the music running. Later, I turned on the monitor by hitting the power button, the power button lit up blue, but no screen showed up for a good minute or more. During that time I tried turning off the monitor (the button was sticky in that i could hit the power button and the blue power light stays on instead of going off) i tried holding down the power button, the menu button, etc. Eventually I got a picture.

Since then, my menu button is permanently locked. I try holding down the button above the power button for 10+ secs, and sometimes it will show a little unlock icon, but again when i hit the menu button, nothing happens for a good 20-30 seconds, and then i get a lock icon on the screen. It's almost as if the menu button is sticking or something.

When I turn monitor off then on, it takes ~ 75 secs for screen to show up. When I reboot my computer, the screen, even when it had previously been turned on and showing a picture, will go black until "Starting Windows" shows up. So I can no longer access my bios screen.. i may be able to, but i don't recall what button it is offhand, and since my screen is black through the entire booting screen with "hit F** for bios" etc, I'll have to look it up.

Is this a hardware issue? could this be my PC, or is it my monitor?

I am using my monitor with the provided Dell DVI cable. My computer is new and is running 2X Nvidia 460 SLI with the most recent drivers on Windows 7 Professional O/S. The only change I made before noticing this issue was that I swapped out the really noisy high performance fan in my case for the default case fan because of noise levels. i did this carefully and my PC itself does not seem affected. Internal temperatures are good, idling around ~33 for the GPU up to like 75-80 when under load.

I also installed FanSpeed and tried to install cpu-z, but cpu-z wouldn't run for whatever reason. I have tested with FanSpeed turned off as well as on.

DELL-Chris M · Answer

To unlock the monitor controls and get rid of the Lock, press and hold the monitor Menu button for about 10-15 seconds.
Buttons =
1 Preset Modes
2 Brightness/Contrast
3 Menu
4 Exit
5 Power

* Power off the PC
* Power off the monitor
* Disconnect the power cord from the monitor
* Disconnect all monitor cords from the PC (USB, DVI, VGA, DisplayPort, HDMI, etc.)
* While disconnected, press and hold the monitor power button down for 5 seconds
* Reconnect the DVI cord to the monitor and to the PC video card
* Reconnect the power cord to the monitor
* Power on the monitor if it does not power on by itself
* Power on the PC
* Press the monitor Input Source Select button and choose DVI

seajewel · Answer

i can try your second suggestion, but i assure you your hard unlock is not working. while i was in fact using the "exit" button to try to unlock it (and it seems to, but it doesn't actually work on my monitor) i did this because the dell documentation, found at

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

says "Unlock function– Only hard unlock (Press and hold the button above power button for 10 sec)"

but i tried yours as well (using the 2nd above power button intsead of the one above) and it still only shows the locked icon.

DELL-Chris M · Answer

Contact Support and get it replaced.

mds2004 · Answer

Just wanted to say thank you. I had both the issues with the lock and the insane delay of response when turning on but the solution of unplugging and holding the power button fixed it. Thanks.

rasn · Answer

This helped for me too. Why is it happening in the first place? Actually I had to do it once more. Why? Looks like a SW bug, any firmware updates?

Finner42 · Answer

I too have had this problem with a recently bought U2311H. I tried the suggestions, and while they worked for a day or so, the problem came back - after leaving the monitor powered off over night, it takes 1+ min to turn back on. I have a 2nd (non-Dell) monitor on the computer which turns on immediately, so I know it's not the system taking a while to start.

I took the Dell back to the shop and swapped it for a new one, but am still having the same problem.

Does anyone know why this is happening?

rasn · Answer

My guess it takes given video cards and two monitors.

I have a nvidia 9600 GT, same happenned to me with 2 displays connected. Now I disconnected the other and do not switch it off for the night and it looks like working for a few weeks now.

Still I guess it is Dell to blame, definetely looks like a SW bug in the monitor, any firmware updates, Dell?

(Once it is in the "bad" state, the slow on problem also happens with other computers).

Sentry13 · Answer

I started having the exact same issue about a week ago with mine.  I will try the menu unlock method above tonight when I get home from work.  So are we saying that the slowness of the monitor coming on is related to the menu being locked or is that going to be a seperate issue?  capacitors maybe?  Or is it that the monitor is not set to DVI as a default and takes longer to display since it has to detect a signal coming in and then it shows up?

seajewel · Answer

i was the original poster. just dropping in to say that my problems resulted from using SpeedFan (or was it FanSpeed?). It's a program that controls your fans and monitors your temperatures.  For some reason, it was interacting badly with the U2311H monitor. after uninstalling, I have no issues whatsoever with my monitor.  I did contact the SpeedFan site, but they were unable to give me any answer as to why that was happening.

rasn · Answer

Hmm. I also have SpeedFan installed, so I guess it might have something to do with the problem indeed.

Problem has not apperaed for me a while, but I also have not used SpeedFan for a while. Hmmm. I do not feel like testing it right now, did you actually test that SpeedFan?

[joke on]

Maybe instead of monitioring the temperature it temperatured the monitor .;)

[joke off]

rasn · Answer

Slowness of the monitor and menu lock happenned to me at the same time, so I would say that these are related.

seajewel · Answer

Absolutely positive it was SpeedFan for me. The problems started when I installed it, but I didn't connect the two. I actually had Dell ship me another monitor which was fine until I installed SpeedFan, which is how I figured it out.

It is too bad, because i really liked SpeedFan otherwise. But it totally made the monitor unusable. I'm sorry to hear they haven't fixed the problem.

Sentry13 · Answer

An update here as well.  I tried the method above to unlock the monitor and it worked great!  Saved me the hassle of shipping it back and all.  As to what causes it I have no idea, I haven't used speed fan in years since it isn't accurate with many of the newer CPUs today.

Kim Letkeman · Answer

@seajewel -- I suddenly started having trouble after rebuilding my computer and when I saw your post I was stunned at how accurate it was ... I had installed speedfan on my machine to monitor temperatures etc ... never again. Thanks for pointing out the problem. Monitor seems better.

moncen · Answer

I first started having this problem when I installed speedfan as well. I uninstalled it but the problem is still there. Any remedies?

Monitors

U2311h takes 1+min to turn on and menu button is permanently locked

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