Steve's Rant: Who You Gonna Call?
or Chasing Your Tail

When I was a kid, I used to hear my Dad talk about chasing his tail, I’d seen the dog do that but I really didn’t understand what the cliché meant.  Things have changed since I was a kid and anyone who has ever needed tech support for a computer should know what “Chasing your Tail” means.

Last week my monitor just stopped working.  I rebooted my computer, and it looked normal as the scrolling bar did its thing, but when it should have gone to the Windows desktop, I got a message on the monitor “No Signal”.  I could hear the start up sounds coming from the speakers, so I know the computer was finishing its normal boot sequence, but there was no video.

Now I admit, my system is a bit more complicated then the average home computer.  For one thing I run Vista Ultimate in a dual boot configuration with Windows XP Pro.  I run the dual boot because (as you know if you read this page very often) Vista has a history of instability, and when I need to work from home, I can’t have a finicky computer.  So when my monitor shut down, and it was clear after several reboots that it was not going to come back anytime soon, I rebooted the system into Windows XP and it worked just fine.  Big surprise.

I did find I could boot into Vista if I disabled the video card and used the standard VGA driver.  It would also work in safe mode.

So that is how I started chasing my tail.  I talked to Nvidia (the video card manufacturer) who had me upgrade and then downgrade the drivers, with no success.  I replaced the video card, same issue.  I posted messages on three tech support forums and based on their suggestions I tried to change resolution and refresh rates.  The problem there is you can’t change refresh rate in safe mode or when using the standard VGA driver, and obviously you can’t change settings if the monitor won’t display anything!  Every time I re-enabled the video card or installed a new driver for it I would lose video again.  (Maybe if I run faster?)

Finally someone suggested hooking up an old fashion CRT monitor. Boom, the system came right up.  After several more efforts I finally found that the system would run properly only in analogue mode.  So I removed my DVI cable and hooked it up using an analogue cable, and the system booted up and ran.

By now I have that tail so close I can almost bite down on it.  Clearly the problem is between the monitor and the computer software.  So I emailed Acer the monitor’s manufacturer and explained the problem.  They suggested I hook the monitor up to another Vista computer that doesn’t have a dual boot configuration, they explained if they didn’t hear back from me is 72 hours they would close the case.

Now folks, I own two computer stores and even I don’t have access to another Windows Vista Ultimate system with DVI video.  Perhaps they could have just said “Please go stand on your hands in the center lane of I-465 for 3 hours, then try again, if we don’t hear from you we will assume the problem is resolved.”

I’m starting to get winded, but I think I can catch that tail, I think I can, I think I can….

~Steve