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5 Posts
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692
990, S2740L flashes repeatedly when started
I have a Dell Optiplex 990 with a Dell S2740L monitor. I purchased them approximately 2011-2012. I had it set up with 2 AMD Radeon graphic cards so I could run three S2740L monitors, but now just run a single S2740L monitor. Everything was working fine for the past year plus. However, recently the monitor wouldn't wake when the mouse or keyboard was used. Instead it flashes repeatedly for about 5 minutes. Eventually it comes on full time and work perfectly. No flickering, no unexpected actions, screen resolution is excellent, etc. Once I stop using it for a while it will go blank, like it's in sleep mode or on screen saver. I do not have it on sleep mode, no screen saver is on, and the PC isn't set to sleep or hibernate.
Seeking suggestions on what to look for. Thank you!
savvy2
2.5K Posts
0
April 26th, 2019 06:00
3 monitors ,why? (ill skip that wonderment)
first off you failed to say what all 3 do wrong. we can not see your 3 screens at the same time.
exact Radeon cards unstated. nor how all 3 are connect , to what class of cables, vga,hdmi,DP or DVI.
you have all 3 not DP. so what are you connecting to?
7 year old monitors.
have you looked every inch of OSD (mon. menu button pushed)? look for those old days, 2010 and older mostly, monitor sleep timers? your 66 page manual shows no such feature (good, means modern mon)
all 3 monitors will tell you if on, if the PC sleeps (etc) No SIGnal
all inputs dead.?
learn to use the monitors brain to tell you what is going on, even use OSD, pick (INPUTS)
3 input choices and auto select, the latter may get you in trouble using 2 or more monitors.
and your PC OS , with current drivers, for those video cards.
If the monitor warns you say the DVI port went dead, it did. and is PC issue.
same with all inputs for sure.
my guess is the drivers on this PC are not correct. did you get them from AMD/ATI web site, you should.
68cutlass
192 Posts
0
April 26th, 2019 07:00
Try setting power settings to never turn off montior then select blank screen saver and set it to however long you want to wait for monitor to blank out. This will keep power applied to the monitor and I've used it to get longer life out of a failing monitor.
psbrawner
5 Posts
0
April 26th, 2019 07:00
savvy2: Thanks for responding. As I stated in my first post I did have 3 monitors set up, but now only use one. I had 3 because of the work I did at the time and they worked perfectly all the time. I'm using a Radeon 6450 HD card for the single monitor that's now connected via DVI cable. It was working perfectly until recently, so something changed. Also as I mentioned the monitor flashes repeatedly when turning it on, starting the PC or just moving the mouse or touching keyboard. Eventually it kicks in and works fine until I stop using it, at which point it eventually goes into a form of sleep mode. I did fail to mention I did check the OSD settings. However, as I mentioned I do not have any sleep or hibernate settings turned on. Nothing should shut off.
Since posting I did use Dell's diag tool to see what was going on, and it did note that the graphic card had a driver update. I had checked the status of the drivers and all looked current, but I did fail to mention that in my first post. I went ahead and downloaded and installed the updated driver and will see if that changes anything.
Thanks.
psbrawner
5 Posts
0
April 26th, 2019 12:00
68cutlass: Thanks for replying. I did try that but it made no difference. The good news is the driver and system update I downloaded and installed seems to have worked. It's interesting because the drivers all showed as current, but this latest one worked nonetheless. Oh well, the monitor is working correctly so far so I'm not going to complain.
BTW - 68 Cutlass is a super nice machine! I grew up up in that era and remember them well!