"In laymen's terms we'd recommend not turning it off."

May 15, 2009 2:16 AM

An LG 22' widescreen monitor, a few months old and seemingly not overheating or failing thanks to the computer, shuts itself off and won't come back on without a power cycle. I'd like to avoid returning it to base if possible.

I've owned an LG 22 inch W2242P since February, with absolutely no problems. Last night, while casually sitting at my PC, the monitor powers down into something like a power save mode - the power button is still lit, but doesn't do anything when I push it, none of the menu buttons do anything, and there's no 'LOST SIGNAL' indicator on the screen.

My first thought's to check all the leads - they're fine, no evidence of problems. Power leads are fine, I jiggle all the display leads for good measure, I reset the computer, nothing. The back of the monitor isn't hot, but I give the vents a bit of dusting down just in case. Upon unplugging the monitor from the mains for half a minute and replacing it I get a signal and everything seems to work fine, but turning off the monitor from the power button sets it right back to the 'powered down' state and seems to be non-transient and reproducable.

I haven't tested this at length, not wanting to keep powering the thing on and off unduly, and haven't been able to say for sure if it still powers off randomly. I'd like to get any ideas from people who have encountered this or might know why it's happening, though, as not being able to turn it off at night is quite bad enough. LG's first and only response was 'get a technician to take it away and in the meantime just use the power button, dummy' but I'd rather not lose my only monitor for a while.

posted by stelas to Technology (5 answers total)

I've seen this a couple of times at work, and it's almost always a video card issue. Do you a) have an extra monitor to try plugging into the video card and b) do you have another computer to plug the monitor into? That way, we can determine if it's a monitor of video card issue.
posted by jmd82 at 6:08 AM on May 15, 2009

Possibly irrelevant but I've just started having a similar problem with an LG22" I've inherited. It will randomly kill the screen and the LED power light goes from it's green 'I'm on' light to an amber 'I'm waiting' light.

In my case a little percussive maintenance does the trick, so I think it's a loose wire inside...
posted by twine42 at 1:20 PM on May 15, 2009

Response by poster: jmd: I've tried all of that today. It's definitely the monitor and not the graphics card - quite apart from the fact that the problem persisted through different leads and computers, it's even persisted through computers being restarted and booted up and down and whatnot.
posted by stelas at 6:57 PM on May 15, 2009

Then RMA that sucker, if you still can. Or warranty. Sadly, it is probably toast :(
posted by jmd82 at 7:18 AM on May 18, 2009

I had this happen to an HDTV...
A week later it wouldn't turn on at all.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
posted by raygan at 11:02 AM on May 19, 2009