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nineiron

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Monitor stays in standby

I recently acquired a Gateway  G6-333c loaded with Windows 98. After several mis-adventures having to do with video cards and drivers the computer hung up. It would not respond to the mouse or to any keyboadr commands. After I re-booted the monitor did not come on. The orange Standby light comes on but that,s all. Can't tell what the CPU is doing, but I can hear it running. Any ideas?
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bobinmad
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The orange light means there is no signal getting to the monitor.

Check your connections, reseat your video card an thne we'll look at other possible causes.

bobinmad
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Davy070599

I've seen the problem caused by the monitor.  Switch monitor.

You can also disable powermanagement in your bios and in Windows 98.
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There are two video cards. The original, ATI Rage Pro and a DRVGA3D-8MB added by the previous owner. I have done nothing to the ATI unit but I did reseat the VGA unit and I rechecked the connection as best I could (disconnect-reconnect). The symptoms are the same no matter which card I connect to. Also, I connected the monitor to another computer and it works fine.
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Have you checked www.atitech.com for updated drivers?  We had a similar issue with one of our ATI Rage Pro cards and we did this to resolve:

*  Updated the BIOS to disable all power management control there and allow WIndows to manage

*  Updated our Video drivers from www.atitech.com ... and ...

*  Updated Windows 98 with WindowsUpdate including DirectX 7.0a updates.

Asta

PS  Are you using the functionality from both cards?  I'd be inclined to use only one based on some of the things I've read about dual cards, conflicts and resource drains.
PS  One final note, when we could not wake our one system from standby using mouse .... one and only one thing helped to awaken it and that was the space bar.  Perhaps within our bios you have set wake up control to a specific key and may benefit by checking your BIOS setup.
I have no idea how to do any of this without the monitor. Can you give me some advice about how to proceed?
I would take out both video cards and put the ATI in a different slot and see if you can't get a standard VGA adaptor, delete the others, and then get the right drivers.

maybe someone has a better idea


bobinmad
Have a monitor that does similar to this, the problem appears (in my case) to be the monitor. When I shut down the PC it normally resides on, the monitor goes into "self shutdown" and if I put another PC on it, it quite often will not turn back on. The monitor in question appears to function correctly with the AGP Banshee card it is normally hooked up to and *some* other 3DFX cards and some TNT but usually I turn the monitor of for 60secs when changing PC's and it will come up normally. There doesn't appear to be a specific fix in my case as the monitor does this on receiving signal-low from any video card. Changing power management/ACPI settings has no effect on this.

Cheers,
Guru
I had the same symptom in a pIII system where the processor had worked loose from the motherboard. (The connector had actually snapped off, but the motherboard still managed to hold the processor as long as I did not go off road with the computer!) Could be a loose processor?
(Could be a loose anything, but I have no experience of the outcome of loose anything elses)
The monitor works fine on another system; you've verified the connections again on the problem system and ensured that there are no bent pins on the connectors, right?  Sometimes cards can create problems if they are

1.  too tight

2.  too loose

3.  badly seated

4.  Dual cards may be more problems than you now should be dealing with, I'd remove one and go for test purposes with the one video card I have the most current drivers for and reconnect.

5.  Once one card is verified, well seated, the other removed, I'd boot in SAFE MODE.

6.   I'd also ensure that power management in the BIOS is turned OFF.

7.   I'd then REBOOT HOLDING CTRL until I get the menu and choose SAFE MODE.  I feel that your problem is multiple erroneous entries of components not visible in normal mode, but clearly there in SAFE.  Remove ALL occurrences.

8.  Then in device manager I would remove all video cards and all monitors and any other errors or duplicates.

9.  After removing all, I'd do a normal shutdown and leave all off for a few minutes.

10.  At reboot, I'd again ensure that the monitor is attached and on prior to booting system.  

11.  I'd make sure that I've got current video drivers for the video card in use and install current software, drivers, etc. then also ensure that the correct monitor INF is loaded/represented in device manager.

 .... will forego further input to see if you've already tried these things before inundating you further with maybes.

Asta
I hasten to add that I don't use Gateway system(s) so my recommendations are based on personal experiences with other systems.  I assume that your system and BIOS are current and that your system supports the Plug and Play Operating System and environment, if not please advise.  I also assume that your BIOS setting for PNP OS = yes so that you can check within Windows the control panel and Power Management to create the settings of your choice.  Also within the BIOS, perhaps you've got options as to what may wake up your system when in sleep, when in standby, or the like .... perhaps modifying settings there (should all else fail), will allow you to awaken your suspended monitor either via mouse, via shift or some specific key event.

have you tryed to connect the system to a different outlet on a different circet breaker (room)
have you check to see if you really have a 3 prong outlet?
sometime this will help
or have you gone to a buddy s house and plug in only your computer to his moniture, KB, and mouse, to see if it may be the box.  
I have removed the extra video card and the modem and have checked around the motherboard for anything loose. Turned on the power and found no difference. On start-up the power ON indicator lights but the hard drive light does not. Re-booting results in a momentary flicker of the hard drive light and the CDROM light then nothing. One thing I have noticed that I meant to mention before is that the power switch doesn't do anything. To turn the power on and off I have been using the switch on the surge arrester/power distribution strip. Could it be that there is no power getting to the hard drive ? If so, what is it that I hear running when the power is on?
do you know if it is a ATX ot a old AT powersupply?
if it is AT  the system is most likely a priparrity system   meaning the hardware in the case will come from gateway
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bobinmad
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Power supply is ATX90-3405. I have identified the cable to the motherboard but it seems very tight. Is there some removal technique? I do not like the idea of using brute force around the motherboard.
The plastic should mesh well, to take it off you press on the tab, and gently pull up and towards you.

Turn the power on with the case open, see if the CPU fan/lights on the motherboard fire up.

You may have a short on the board :(
I have removed and reinstalled the cable from the power supply to the motherboard. Makes no difference. Where are the CPU/fan lights on the motherboard? I didn't see any lights on the board.What would you think about measuring the voltages at the connector to the board? I have a 20,000 ohms /volt meter. The output voltages are printed on the power supply label.
Checking for a bad power supply source is a good idea.

If you do not have a cpu fan, you would know probably, sits on top or around processor. Is it a slot 1?

Bobinmad
A couple of re-seat cycles with the plug and some wiggling of the cable bundle and the monitor is ON. At start-up I am getting a warning that there is a display problem, but I will file that as a new problem. Many thanks to all who offerred comments.