HardwareBanter - View Single Post - My monitor went black in Linux/Debian (X) and text mode earlier today...

deimos · May 22nd 06, 01:24 AM posted to alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia

wrote:
About over an hour ago, I was watching a long video (FLV file; not fullscreen) for about 30 minutes in GMPlayer on
my Linux/Debian box (Linux foobar 2.6.14-2-k7 #1 Wed Dec 28 19:14:46 UTC 2005 i686 GNU/Linux) while my
gaming/Windows box was doing SpinRite stuff (so far no errors, but I will resume overnight since it has 8 hours to
go). Then, all the sudden my monitor's picture went black. Monitor said the video signal was still there (not
blinking). Audio from my cheap Sony speakers stopped too. I thought my computer crashed hard, but it wasn't since
I could still ssh into my box from another computer. I even tried ctrl-alt-backsapce to get out of X, but it
didn't work(?). I didn't see any text console (I set to boot to text mode so I have to type startx command). Also,
ps didn't show X and KDE running anymore so either I killed it or it died by itself.

My Windows XP Pro. SP2 (all updates) machine was still showing video and my desktop on the screen since it was
hooked up to an old 4-ports (since the end of 2001) OmniCube KVM switch (VGA and PS/2 ports) with the Linux box. I
looked, checked, and fiddled with the cables for KVM switch and connections to the Linux box. I rebooted the box
via SSH (love text modes!), HDD light was stuck/hung forever (not doing anything like loading or stopping), no
beeps, nothing on screen, etc. No go.

I decided to shut down (via SSH) the machine and power off for a few minutes (shut off power supply unit too).
Again, I looked around for any weirdness like moved my case, unplug, replug, etc. Then, I powered back on, heard a
beep (normal one), saw the bootup on screen, hit a key to stop at GRUB loader before loading Debian, ... and la la
it works again!

Any ideas on what the heck happened or had this problem before? Dang it, I lost my 142 days of uptime. Still did
not beat my 227 days from a few years ago!

I hope this weirdness doesn't happen again.

Thank you in advance.

If you couldn't see the BIOS screen, then it absolutely has to be low
level hardware failure. Having experienced a similar failure on an XP
system, my theory is it's voltage related. Some component (whether on
your video card or motherboard) may have "blown" (for whatever that
means) and killed the display temporarily or corrupted the video BIOS to
an extent (pullin' that last one outta' my crack...)

I have had this happen with blown capacitors on a motherboard. It
killed the video, caused hard drives to stall on spin up, and gave a
beep code error for video, and required several reboots to come up. It
recovered, but became unstable and unable to stay powered on for very
long (progressively got worse). I at first mis-diagnosed it as hard
drive failure and did everything but replacing the mobo (PSU, check the
HD's, drivers, etc).

I have also had video cards killed by brownouts and static electricity.
In the case of a brownout, a temporary dip in voltage destroyed the
card completely. The fan would turn, but nothing would display. I've
since how important regular voltage can be to certain sensitive components.