Monitor goes into sleep moad and won't respond

[geno368]

I have a 1 year old Gateway desktop running Windows 7 home premium with 4gb ram. Sometimes, when I am working and the system may be idle for 15 min or so, the monitor will go into sleep mode. It shows no signal, and no keyboard action will awaken it. I have the power settings to never turn off and the screen saver is off as well. I swapped out the monitor with another and it did the same thing, so I think I have eliminated hardware. I then went to the device mgr and attempted a driver update, which said I had the latest driver. The only way it will come back on is to cold boot the system. BTW, I have reseated the video cable as well. Also, when this happens, the keyboard is dead as well.
Thanks

[DaveLembke]

Some systems have power utilities in addition to those built into windows. For example I have Toshiba that I can go in and set the windows power properties and it doesnt affect the system if set to never sleep because the toshiba utility tells it to sleep etc. So I had to go into the toshiba power utility to make changes to that.

I am not familiar with gateways bundled software, since the last Gateway i owned I had given to me and it was a 386DX33 with Windows 3.11, and I always tell people to go with a better brand for a few bucks more. Their cheap hardware in my opionion is worse than eMachines and Dell and I am hoping your not dealing with a bad main board as their boards are not built to the best of quality and generally have issues before and shortly after the warranties expire. The last gateway I had brought to me was a Pentium 4 model and its motherboard was some no name motherboard with capacitors that were all leaking out their tops. This system was just about 1 year old and it caused the system to act very strangely with laggy slowness then lockups etc.

Take a peek into your case and look at the internals and see if anything doesnt look quite right. 9 times out of 10 there is nothing to be found, but sometimes you find something like leaking or swelled capacitors which are cylendrical parts with an aluminum flat top that usually has an X on them so that they pop their tops when they fail instead of exploding if they can not vent gases upon failure.

If you have a multimater handy or if your system has a utility on the bios to check voltages, I would let the system run and watch for voltage drop or instability. If you have a spare power supply kicking around and if this case takes a universal supply instead of something specific in dimension to an odd case you can try swapping power suppies.

If the system completely shuts down, that is drives and fans stop operating you could also have a thermal issue where at say 15 minutes the system reaches a critical temperature and it shuts itself down quickly to protect itself. If this is the case usually you have a clogged heatsink or heat sink compound has dried up on CPU, or the system is detecting a fan not spinning or spinning to proper speed measured by usually a yellow wire tach paired with the red and black fan power to the cpu.

[geno368]

Thanks for the reply.  I have looked at the m/b and all looks ok.  No bulging capacitors or excessive dust on processor, etc.  Keep in mind, that when this monitor goes to sleep, the system is still operating correctly with fans running and the power light is on steady.  No matter what I do to try to wake up the monitor, is is not responsive.  I have to hold down the power button on the tower for a few seconds to shut it down.  I then wait a few minutes and bring the system back on.

[DaveLembke]

You stated:

I swapped out the monitor with another and it did the same thing

so its not monitor, but system related.

No keyboard response in that num lock and caps lock doesnt function would point to motherboard or power supply is dropping out.

If num lock and caps lock led's light on keyboard then its just a lost video signal and I would try installing a different video card or if there is a video card and integrated video on the MB, uninstall the video card and try the integrated video. I am guessing that your system is probably running off of the integrated video. If this is the case and you have a spare video card kicking around, and a slot that can accept it such as PCI or PCIe slot and a video card matching that, you can try to use an alternate video source and see if you get the same results.

[geno368]

Thanks for the help...If the PS was kicking out on me, would the drives and fans be running normally?  The monitor just goes into sleep mode with an orange light like it has no video signal. I have swapped out the video cable as well.  I will try to borrow a card and see if I can fit it on the MB...BTW...what brand system do you deem as good quality