I want to preface this by saying I do not actually know anything about computers at all, and if you can help me please try to dumb it down for me.

My computer monitor (Dell) has gradually been developing problems for a while. At one point last year, I was heavily using the power button on it to disable the screen temporarily to make my room dark. After a while of this, the button has trouble being depressed and I'm not able to fully press it to turn the screen off anymore. I don't know if it's related to the recent issue.

The recent issue is that within the past few weeks when my computer fell asleep and I would wake it up, instead of the monitor going straight to my login screen it displayed brand and information about the monitor or something? Then would wake up from that and resume working. I thought it was odd because it never did that before.

Now, a little over a week ago, when I turn my computer on, the monitor screen remains black and the power button on the monitor is flickering green. Initially this only lasted a couple minutes and the screen would turn on and work normally. But with each passing day it's getting longer and longer to get to this part, including when the computer would fall asleep. To avoid this I went to my power settings and made it so the computer didn't fall asleep very often, but I still shut it down at night.

Today I turned it on and it took over 20 minutes of black screen and power button flickering before it finally worked. I'm getting very worried that soon it won't turn on at all.

I have pressed all the cords I could find more firmly into the monitor itself and into the back of my computer tower but this doesn't seem to help. The main cord that goes from the monitor into the computer has these screw-like things flanking the actual plug, and where it goes into the computer one of these screw things is loose. I've tried tightening it but it doesn't seem to do anything and I don't know how long its been like that or if it has anything to do with it.

When the screen finally comes on, the computer itself seems normal so I'm not sure it's really a problem with the computer part, just the monitor. Once it does come on, I don't experience any more issues, nothing weird happens, the screen isn't flickering or anything, it's just that it struggles to come on when it first wakes up.

I don't know anything else about the hardware except the monitor is Dell brand and so is the computer tower, the computer tower says "optiplex 745" on it also, there's a sticker that says "intel core 2 duo inside" and another that says "designated for microsoft windows xp" although the system is now a windows 7.

I've tried looking up what is happening but I can't find a situation like mine, when I start reading their issues it sounds like the screen just won't come on, when mine eventually does. Do you think its something weird with the cables or should I get another monitor or what?

• Cords / ports are damaged. You could try with a different set and see if it's that type of issue
• Your monitor is dying. I had a Dell monitor that took forever to turn on and I'd need to jam the power button with reckless anger to get it to turn on

I build computers with my brother. I'm not a tech or anything.

thank you for the ideas. Is there any reason the cords/ports would become damaged? Age or dust or something?

I forgot to mention that within the past month I had several power surges due to severe storms where everything was switching between on and off, including my computer. The computer itself is plugged into a surge protector power strip by itself, but I don't know if the monitor could have gotten damaged from all the crazy off and on that was happening.

Tugging, unplugging repeatedly and general worn could be the cause. If you can swap them and check, it would at least rule out or confirm that. If it doesn't work, maybe try with a different monitor as well (while using the same cords).

Wouldn't put it on the surges tbh.

hm, the cords are never unplugged or even really touched, they're fed behind my desk and I forget about them. Today the monitor took about 50 minutes of black screen and power button flickering before it came on, so it is getting longer but it still came on.

Once I get the chance to do these things I will let you know the result, thank you for helping.

I'd definitely follow s suggestions to make sure it's not the cords. It is a bit worrysome that the power button is flickering. It could just be that the light is breaking, but maybe something else is going on with the power supply.

I have to admit that I've never ever had a monitor break on me, I always replaced them with something better before they had the chance to break. I'd replace them once every 7-10 years or so. But yours does sound pretty old, assuming you got it together with the computer which started off at Windows XP.

If you do decide to buy a new monitor, be careful in what you buy. Since your cable has screws, it's either VGA or DVI, and most new monitors/computers use HDMI or DisplayPort or something like that. So if you buy a new monitor and don't pay attention, you may not be able to connect it to the computer because it's too old (though you could buy a cable to convert the newer types to an older type I guess, but I try to avoid it if I can, because it could cause the screen image to flicker or vibrate/shake. It's usually less stable than having matching connections.). Since Windows 7 is more or less end-of-life, there won't be updates coming to it anymore. So it may also be worth it to replace the computer as well. Definitely keep an eye out for deals combining a computer and a monitor. Oh, if your computer is that old, your mouse and keyboard may still be using a PS2 port, which will not be present on any new computers you buy now. If the mouse and keyboard have a USB cable, then you're good.

I've actually had many problems with my computer and monitor over the years and both have been replaced multiple times. My dad has a friend who refurbishes computers or whatever and helps us when things go wrong, which involves transferring the computer's "guts" (files etc) into a new computer. One of the most major issues I've ever had was my computer's motherboard catching fire - yes, really. But that was in 2012 and has been replaced, which was when my computer's guts was put into a windows 7 computer. I believe that is still the same one I have now. However, there was some sort of issue with this one that has developed that I can't remember the details of, it occasionally produces two beeps and says something about low battery voltage which might be the cause of all this, who knows. This does not happen often and hasn't happened in a while, even lately when I'm having trouble with the monitor. Whatever that issue was, the solution I was told to do is to have the computer & monitor plugged into a power strip by itself, and switch off the power strip itself at night after shutting down the computer. Over time, the red light of the switch on the power strip has started to flicker also, so I looked it up and it's possibly damaged from power surges also? And finally, there is a small blinking green light in the bottom right corner on the front of the computer tower which illuminates a picture of a cylinder and I don't know what this is, even after trying to research. This light, I feel, is noticeably weaker lately.

As for the monitor it has been within the past few years that I switched it out with the current one. The previous one was experiencing a flickering/strobing effect in the display itself.

Today I've been waiting 6 hours and the screen still has not come on, and its power button is still flickering.

some additional information above.

@ Luck I'm not used to troubleshooting over distance, so I'm not quite sure as to what's going on. A pc from 2012 is still quite old by computer standards, but hey, if it does whatever you want it to do, then it's fine. I'm not familiar with power surges, the electricity net over here is very very stable, so I've never experienced equipment breaking down due to power surges, so I can't tell if any of the symptoms you're describing could be from that. I know that my dad has had a power switch for years with a flickering power light, and it does just fine. It's probably nothing, the little light needs way way less power to light up than your pc needs to be able to run, so if it would be a problem, you'd probably have noticed your pc randomly shutting down. The light at the cylinder might be a harddisk usage indicator. That's fine I guess, since the longer you use your pc, the fuller your harddisk gets, the more it'll be be used. If it's a regular harddisk and not a solid state drive (SSD), you may see increased performance if you defragmentise your harddisk. That basically rearranges the files on your harddisk in such a way that often used files are put together so it's faster to find them. It's really detrimental to a SSD drive though, since it has limited write actions in it's lifespan, and it works way differently so files don't need to be physically close together. But anyway, that's not why your pc takes 6 hours to turn on. The two beeps are a bit worrysome though, usually beeps indicate some form of hardware problems. It's difficult to say when all I can do is remote troubleshooting, but I did find this topic on the dell forum which describes the problem that you're facing. They seem to be separate problems though, the beeps may come from a problem with your RAM, which might cause the startup problems. It's difficult to test if you don't have a spare monitor to test with. I guess it's best to find someone near you to look at the pc physically. The solution in that forum post seemed to be to swap some components. You might need some tech-savy person to try some stuff for you. Especially if they can bring a spare monitor (and/or a laptop, so you can test your monitor on another pc) and some cords, it'd be a lot easier to pinpoint the problem.

Edit: This post also seems to indicate that the RAM could be a problem. It might not be a problem with the monitor at all then. Maybe that does depend on the model of your pc. Two beeps could be something different on a different model.

Another edit: This post mentions that there's also two beeps to indicate that there's no video. So we're back to square one xD It might be the RAM, or it might be the monitor, or related to video output. Since you did get the advice before to have the computer and monitor on a separate power strip, it might be related to what this guy sais on the forum post. He managed to get it working again by drawing power via some USB device. I'm no expert on how these kind of things work. Maybe it helps if you press the power button on the pc after you switch off the power strip. It'll try to turn on, but obviously has no power to do so, but pressing the power button may use up any residual charge that's left in the system. Someone once told me that this can sometimes fix some problems, though I have no idea if it will help you in any way. At least it's easy to check.

I'm pretty sure that the pc itself is on "underneath" the black screen of the monitor. Yesterday it took 4 hours for the screen to come on, and when I checked the uptime in the task manager performance it also said 4 hours, I take it to mean that the computer is on under there I just can't see it. In the morning I press the power button and it behaves normally, I hear its normal whirring and the power button is solid green as usual. When I try to research problems with this model of computer I see stuff like the power button is amber or there are numbered diagnostic lights lit up, none of which I've seen. It also does not do the two beeps during this time.

Since my monitor has yet to come on, I'm worried about how I'll be turning off the computer. Since I can't see what I'm doing to get to the start menu, I have no choice but to press the power button, is it safe? I've tried researching with mixed results.

Thank you for all your help. I'm trying to see if I can get another monitor soon I hope...

Right, then the RAM is definitely not the problem, because the computer starts without problems. The two beeps which occasionally happen must be related to video output then. I'm not sure what that means or how you should fix that. That might mean that your monitor is not the problem, but rather something on the system board broke. If there is space to swap connectors around, that would be a good thing to try. I don't know enough about hardware to know for sure whether it's possible to try different connectors though.

I don't have a Windows 7 pc myself to try to shut down, but I've found several options:

• Press the power button once briefly: Depending on your power settings, it'll either shut down or go to sleep mode. My guess is that most likely it'll go to sleep, so that won't be of much help.
• Keep the power button pressed for 5 seconds: This is not very good for your hardware, especially the harddisk, so better not do this unless there is really no other choice.
• First press Esc to get rid of whatever you might have focus on, then press the Windows key, then right arrow, then enter. This doesn't work for me on Windows 10, so it's probably a hit or miss
• First press Esc to get rid of whatever you might have focus on, then hold the Windows Key and at the same time press r. This opens a little window which allows you to run programs by typing their name. Type the following: shutdown.exe /s /f /t 00 then press enter. This tells the computer that you want to shut down with /s (you can use /r instead to reboot). The /f tells it to force close all applications which may otherwise refuse to shut down due to unsaved data. The /t 00 specifies that it should do it right now, otherwise it'll wait 30-60 seconds before shutting down. That might need administrator rights though. - I just tried on my Windows 10 on a non-administrator account, and it worked fine, so this should probably do the trick. It worked without /f too. That might be a little gentler since you're not really having software problems.

(sorry far, will be last ping)

I got a new monitor now! It came with its own cords, but I used the ones from the old monitor to see if it would work, and it did. It can probably be concluded that the monitor itself had just gone bad or something, since the cords don't seem to be the issue.

On 9/21 I ended up shutting off the computer by briefly pressing the power button once and the computer shut down. I didn't bother turning it back on for the past few days since the monitor likely wouldn't work and I didn't want to strain the computer by shutting down with the power button days in a row.

However when I turned it on today to test the new monitor, I had the return of the familiar beeps again and the message Alert! System battery voltage is low. with the option to strike the f1 button to continue which I always do. I've had this message a few times in the past, not frequently and never consistently, so I don't know what that means.

Try connecting elsewhere without using your surge protector.

I'm glad the new monitor fixed the problem! That proves how difficult computer programs can sometimes be! I'm so glad there's nothing wrong with the RAM or system board! This seems to be the easiest fix!

I'm not sure what the system battery voltage warning means, especially if you've been seeing it only sporadically. I've had system batteries die on me before, which is quite noticable because the pc will lose the date settings. Maybe it's a bit less noticable nowadays since the date is often synchronized from the internet. But I guess you'd still get a warning of some sorts.

If at some point the battery does fail completely, it's pretty cheap to replace. You just need one of those flat round batteries that are often used in watches or scales. I wouldn't try to replace it untill it fails completely, since there could be other causes for the warning too. On this Dell forum, there's a huuuuge conversation about this problem. Some people report that it didn't matter what surge protector they used, the error kept popping up untill they plugged their pc in directly into the wall. Other people reported that it didn't matter whether they used a surge protector or not. Others changed their battery and that solved their problem, but for some people that doesn't seem to work either. Some people got it fixed by clearing the event log in the BIOS, for others that didn't work. Some updated their BIOS and it got rid of the warning, for others it didn't work. I saw another person who got several of the same motherboards with batteries, and one of the motherboards would always generate this warning, no matter which of the four batteries they inserted, while the other motherboards did fine with those same batteries. Sooo, there doesn't really seem to be a good solution. I think you're probably stuck with pressing F1 :/