No Signal

[Dodgedakota]

My son plays online games and some of the games ,not all, during the game especially at some grphic intensive point , the moniter shuts down and a no signal error message pops up.  A couple of the games it happens at the exact same point everytime.  one other that he has been playing awhile happens at various points.  You can still hear the game running for a few seconds but then I have to reboot to get the computer to do anything.
  I am running a Dell Dimension 4500, Windows XP, Nvidia ge force 4 Driver version 4.5.2.3 ti 4200 File Version 6.14.10.4523.  I tried updating the graphic driver online but no luck.  Any help would be great,  Thanks   

[Taz71498]

I am no expert at this and I am sure one of our other hardware experts will pop in but...let's try to get more information for them.  Can you give us the exact Video Card you have?  We see it is a Nvidia ge force but ...6200??  Who installed the video card or did it come already installed?  If it was recently installed, did the games start having this problem immediatly after the install?  Does the problem only happen when playing the games or does it happen when you are doing other things on the computer?

Also, what games are being played that are having the problems?

[williamkidd]

Hi Dodgedakota,

It's possible that you are running the monitor at too high a resolution for it to handle graphically intense programs/situations.

Here are some things to try:

1) Lower the resolution - To do this, right-click on your desktop and choose Nvidia Control Panel if it is available. If it's not already selected, choose Change Resolution from the list on the left-hand side (it should be listed under Display). Move the Display Resolution slider on the right-hand side of the window to lower the resolution by moving it to the left. It may ask you to restart the computer after you make a change so go ahead and do that if it does. You will want to close any other applications before restarting.

2) Lower the refresh rate - You may have more than one refresh rate to choose from or you may not depending on your card. The place to change the refresh rate should be on the same page where you change the resolution. If you have more than one refresh rate then you should try switching it to the lower number of Hertz if it is not the one that it is already selected. For example, if you have 60 and 75 Hertz and it is set to 75 then change it to 60. Once again you may have to restart your system after making a change to your refresh rate.

3) Update your monitor driver - This is different than your video card driver and is specifically for your monitor. There are usually a couple of places to check to see if there is an updated driver for your monitor: Windows Update and the website of your monitor's manafacturer. I would check Windows Update first because it should give you a choice to update the driver for your specific monitor as it has knowledge of your system. Before you update the monitor driver you may want to create a manual restore point first just in case something goes wrong. For information on how to create a manual restore point, you can use the section Manually Creating Restore Points in this Windows XP System Restore Guide.

4) Verify that Nvidia and Windows settings match - The settings in your Nvidia Control Panel for monitor resolution, refresh rate, etc. should match those that show up in Control Panel but it's a good thing to verify that they actually do. To access the Windows settings: click Start > Control Panel > Appearance and Themes (when using Category View) > Change the screen resolution (under Pick a task...). This will bring you to the Settings tab of Display Properties where you can check the monitor's resolution. If you then click on the Advanced button and choose the Monitor tab you should see the refresh rate to which Windows is set.

5) Make sure that DirectX is updated - You can check the version of DirectX that is installed by running the DXDiag program. You should be using the newest version of DirectX which is version 10 if you are running newer games, like World of Warcraft or the Sims 3 for example. To run DXDiag and check the DirectX version: click Start > Run..., type dxdiag in the Open box and click OK or press Enter. The DirectX version that you are using will be listed on the first page (System Information) next to DirectX Version. If you need to update DirectX to version 10 then you can do so here.

If after trying all of the above listed suggestions you find that the games are still causing monitor issues then you may have to check the websites for the games themselves. Sometimes a patch can fix issues that a game may be causing but in your case it is happening with multiple games so it seems like it would more likely be associated with the display settings than something game-related.

[Dodgedakota]

Got it to work.  Thank you very much,  The thing that worked was updating my video card, I opened my nvidia icon and found a place to download updates.  It took about 20 minutes because my card was so obsolete but it did work.   Thanks again and my son really thanks you.   .  Have a great day.   Tim

[williamkidd]

Thanks for the update, DD. I'm glad that you were able to get that working.  :)

If you didn't do them as part of your troubleshooting it would still be a good idea to run through Steps 3 through 5 from my last post as having everything up-to-date can often help things work better than expected. It is also a good idea, as you found out, to check the manufacturers' sites every once in a while as they sometimes have updates that the OEMs, in this case Dell, do not have posted.