S271HL Monitor Shows "No Signal" When Computer is Running

Neospirifer

About 1 week ago, my computer and monitor were running normally. I shut it off then and haven't even touched it until yesterday. Now, when I start it up, the following happens:

1. Computer powers up
2. Power button on monitor glows blue, and the screen shows the Acer and Energystar logos
3. Screen turns black for a moment
4. "No signal" box pops up
5. Monitor goes into standby mode with amber power button light.

I thought at first that my graphics card wasn't functioning. It is relatively recently installed but used so I was nervous about that. I opened the case, and the fans on the card are spinning, so it is receiving power. I tried hard rebooting my computer a couple of times, same result. With the computer running, I then unplugged the HDMI cable from the monitor. This caused "cable not connected" to appear on the screen, so obviously the monitor can tell the cable is there. My next test was to plug that end of the cable into another, identical model, monitor. This worked normally, as in:

1. Computer powers up
2. Power button on monitor glows blue, and the screen shows the Acer and Energystar logos
3. Screen turns black for a moment
4. Desktop appears

This indicated to me that it was a problem with the monitor and not my computer or the HDMI cable, which was a bit of a relief. It's still under warranty so I called in and got a repair ticket set up. But after the phone call, I tried a couple other things to make sure. First, I grabbed a different HDMI cable and attached that to monitor and computer. This caused the expected failure, which reinforced my theory that it wasn't the cable. But then I tried connecting a different computer to the original monitor with a different HDMI cable, and that worked, which indicates that it's computer specific. So basically I only get the failure when it's my specific computer with my specific monitor, regardless of cable. One final thing I tried was (while connected to the different monitor, which worked) rebooting in safe mode, in case it was just a software or driver issue on my computer. After I was rebooted, I unplugged the HDMI from the other monitor and plugged it back into mine, and it actually worked. However, when I unplugged it again so I could re-position the monitor in its normal place on my desk and then plugged it back in, it encountered the same failure. I did notice, once connected back to the other monitor, that there was a video card driver update available, so I downloaded that, but I'm not sure why that would be at issue since it works fine plug-and-play on the other monitor as-is. I also tried using the Reset function on the monitor's settings menu, but I could only do that with the other computer plugged into it, since the monitor menu doesn't show up with it's either not connected at all or connected to my computer.

I'm still planning on sending the monitor in for repair, but I'm wondering if anyone has any other troubleshooting steps I can try before doing so, maybe regarding my video card or display settings. I was thinking I could try bringing it out to the living room and hooking it up to my TV via HDMI, but I'm not sure what that might accomplish. I also haven't tried using a DVI cable, or just uninstalling my graphics card and switching to the onboard graphics, but I don't know how the graphics card is the problem since I'm typing this on my computer hooked up to the other monitor now.

billsey

You might just double check that the video card isn't trying to drive the monitor in a way the monitor can't handle. For instance the S271HL support a maximum resolution of 1920x1080 at 60Hz. If your card is trying to run the screen at 72Hz to minimize flicker, it wouldn't display.