Dell monitor keeps going into powersave mode and won't stay on?

The pc was working fine two days ago. I unplugged it and moved my pc and monitor. Plugged it back in today and now the monitor has a yellow power light and does not display video. Powering off and on the monitor button, I see the button turn white for a second or two, then it displays entering powersave mode ST2410.

Can anyone help?
I'm running windows 7 on a Dell XPS studio pc. I've tried disconnecting cables, powering off and on the pc and monitor. I'm stuck trying to figure out how to get out of power save mode. The pc has a white button lit up but the monitor is stuck with a yellow button.

I'm wondering if my video cable went bad. I can press buttons on the side of the monitor and it says no signal from the pc, press any key or mouse to activate or something like that.

Chances are the monitor is set to the wrong input after losing power.
Little square with an arrow marks the button that should make it switch inputs- has to be pushed before it goes to sleep...


Also, make sure it's plugged into the right port on the back of the computer. If you have onboard video + video card, the onboard one is often disabled and doesn't give any output. Very common with dell workstations.

Chances of a video cable having gone bad, less than half a percent IMO

Its a dell thing. I have had several dell monitors do this. Only one i was able to fix, turned out to be cold solder joint.

I know you don't what to hear this but......shes dead elcapitan. :/

Is it under warranty?

I think there is only one place to plug it in. I do have a video card and I believe that is where it is plugged in.
I tried changing the buttons for different input sources but no luck. I'll look again. Thanks for the response.

I think the warranty expired. It's only a few years old though so not giving up yet.

Plug the monitor into a friends computer that you know works.

a reply to: orionthehunter

The cable is probably fine.

Sometimes a monitor will do that if a capacitor goes bad but it's probably a setting on your computer

Trying a different input can help if it's just a setting issue...ie. VGA vs. DVI or HDMI

Probably not much help but figured I'd throw it out there...

There is an old test i used to use on the dell monitors. Remove the power and hold the power button down for a good 3 minutes. This will discharge the capacitors inside and hopefully it will boot back up after.

I hate dell with a passion, they are the worst as sourcing bottom end parts for overpriced systems.

Capacitors as another poster said, are generally the issue. You can pop the case and check for capacitors with bulged tops. A lot of electronics are now made with surface mount parts and good luck working on them without highly specialized tools.

Best Luck.

Edit: If you insist on trying to save it and are comfortable opening it. Your looking for this.


You want to find any bulged capacitors or leaking ones. They should all have a flat top like the one on the left.

Thanks for the responses. I'll try the 3 minute test. That's relatively simple.

I might try my luck with Dell and see if they can help.

The dell monitors are known for losing caps (samsung, too) but usually this just causes them to go blank (backlight fails) or they'll just shut down when warm, but work fine cold. Symptoms get worse with time.

If it worked fine and now comes on but goes to sleep, I'm sticking with incorrect input on the monitor or plugged into the wrong port on the back of the tower.

Could also be a bad solder joint, as mentioned- which can happen if the cable is torqued at all. If you can get your hands on a laptop or other computer to plug the screen into and test, it's an easy way to test the screen.

I can bring my work laptop home. I forgot about it.

Then I guess if the monitor powers up without going to power save mode, cable or connection problem with existing set up?

Dude, that's because you got a Dell.

Apparently I'm getting no signal from the pc to the monitor. Ready to give up on it for the night. Starting to wonder if something could be wrong with the video card or motherboard.
Everything had been working just fine before I disconnected all the cables and moved the pc two days ago.

I might try hooking up my work laptop to the monitor Tommorrow. I didn't realize Dell computers caused so much trouble. I must have been lucky in the past. Except one time I did call Dell tech support many years ago and I told some guy in Pakistan about having a computer problem after doing a Microsoft critical security update. The tech guy told me don't ever do those updates.

The updates are microsoft, not dell. They do cause trouble sometimes.

It costs more, but always buy business class computers. There's a reason you can't buy a good shovel at a hardware store these days- because people won't buy the good one when the cheap one costs half as much and appears to do the same job.

Dell desktops come in many flavors- XPS is a consumer grade. Get a dimension, or for a laptop, a lattitude. Business class machines use better components- and more importantly, microsoft actually tests their driver updates on them before releasing them.

Business class gear is owned by businesses- they have to pay professionals (150-300 an hour) to deal with little problems like this- so they'll gladly pay 1500 for a workstation over the $499 best buy offers one for when it lasts twice as long and needs half as much costly support.

I understand not everyone has the cash- shoot for used business gear. Once the warranty expires after 2-3 years, offices ditch old computers. Bigger companies sell them off by the pallet. You can buy them by the pound, even- and they're still better than the crap you can buy at best buy- although I don't really suggest keeping a machine past about six years. At five they're questionable.
Last year, I put in an order online for a pallet of small form factor dell dimensions for a client. Came to less than $90 per computer, not including keyboard/screen. Almost all of them are still used every day.

Try and pull that off with anything you buy at retail stores. Gift cards probably have a higher failure rate.

Good luck getting it going- bringing home the work laptop is a decent test.
Most laptops only have a VGA connector (cord with blue ends)- screens these days almost all have VGA and DVI (white ends) or HDMI (looks like usb, but bigger and funky shaped)
Depending on the laptop, you might need to enable the port to test the monitor. Windows key + p on most modern machines will show you some options.

a reply to: orionthehunter

My Packard does the same thing even if I change the time for power saver to go into effect, it always switched itself back to the least time to be on.

Computers are bloody clever things.

Update: I got my pc running again like normal.

Thanks for all the responses.

Here's what I did. I took my laptop home at lunch and borrowed a vga cable. Monitor worked off the laptop. Desktop pc to monitor still did not work with the cable. My cable was still good. I decided the problem was with either the vga to dvmi (spelling?) adaptor or my pc. I went to the Dell web site and looked at the service manual for my pc.

Later this evening I unscrewed the thumbnail screw on the back end of the cover. Then I took a flat head screwdriver and popped off the side cover. Then I looked inside and thought oh boy, look at all the dust. I had a cob web in there. I dusted it off, then blew out the dust. I was ready to pop in and out the graphics card in case that was the problem, maybe memory too. I started looking it over and noticed the graphics card was located lower down than where I thought it was. I had been plugging the video cable into the motherboard. I thought that was where I had it plugged in earlier. I unbent part of the cable bracket (possible reason it did not fit the graphics card the first time I tried it the other day) and then plugged it into the graphics card connection. I knew that had to be it. I'm wondering if when I moved my pc a few weeks ago, it worked off the mother board since I only had it unplugged for a few minutes but when I moved it and left it sit for a couple of days, it had a problem lately. I'm not sure. It's working now. Thanks for all the responses and interest especially if you read up to this point.