Recently the monitor on my computer has begun showing “No input signal” and “No video card” messages after the screen saver has been active a few minutes. As such, I cannot use the computer after this has happened since the monitor will not reactivate. To restore normal operation and display on the monitor I need to turn the monitor on and off several times, until eventually the display reappears on the screen. I thought this may have something to do with power management, but I have lost the ability to edit the power scheme configuration on the computer (everything in the Power Options control panel is greyed out). Can you assist in regaining control of these settings, and also fixing the monitor problem? The computer is running Windows XP SP2.

The fact the monitor displays “No input signal” and “No video card” messages after the screen saver activates indicates that the computer is not sending any video to the monitor, most likely because the power management settings on the computer have been set so that after a period of inactivity the monitor is automatically set to go into standby mode. However, it seems that either your monitor does not support a power saving mode, or there is something wrong with the power settings, because instead of displaying these messages it should be going into standby mode. Additionally, the computer and monitor should come out of standby when you press a key or move the mouse. That said, it is likely that the computer is fully operational, but you cannot see what is happening on the computer because the monitor will not reactivate.

We first need to determine why the Power Management settings in Windows are not available. The first possible cause of this problem is that Power Management has become disabled in the system BIOS. The BIOS is the hardware configuration of your computer and if a hardware setting is disabled at this level, the operating system (Windows) will never even see the hardware as being available. We need to check the BIOS setup, but only do this if you are confident with changing system critical settings. If you change an incorrect setting, this could render your computer unbootable. Assuming that you wish to proceed, restart the computer and during the power on self test (before the Windows logo splash screen appears) you should see a message saying “Press … to enter setup”. Press the nominated key to enter the setup. Once this appears, navigate to the Advanced Power Management page. I cannot provide exact step-by-step instructions, as these will differ on different computers. However, the Power Managements settings should be fairly obvious. Verify that Advanced Power Management, or just Power Management is enabled. If not, enable this setting. If you needed to modify a setting, upon exiting the BIOS setup select “Exit and save changes”. If you did not make any changes, select the option “Exit and do not save changes” (or like).

If Power Management is enabled in the BIOS, the cause of this problem now seems to be related to Windows. There is a Microsoft Knowledge Base article (support.microsoft.com/kb/913622) dealing with the situation where the Power Managements settings have been wiped from the computer, making the Power Options control panel unavailable. To restore the settings, go to the “Start” menu > “Run” and type “powercfg /RestoreDefaultPolicies” (without the quotes) and click OK. Be aware, you need to be running Windows XP SP2 or higher for this to work, so you may need to visit Windows Update (windowsupdate.microsoft.com) to update Windows if you have not already.

Assuming that you are able to restore access to the Power Options control panel in Windows, open the control panel and set the “Turn off monitor” power setting to “Never”. This should prevent your monitor from attempting to go into Standby mode, since it appears that your monitor does not support this function. However, if you are still having difficulties, or are still unable to restore access to the Power Options control panel to make this settings’ change, then please contact me again for further advice.