A phone call "The screen stopped working this morning. I need your help!" - with screen he ment a rather new 15" LCD monitor. A peculiar sight actually, the LCD in conjunction with a "fine-tuned" 486DX based, DOS 6.22 operated system.
When I arrived he explained "Everything worked as it should last night but this morning I couldnt get it to start." There had been no electricity shortage, that he knew of.
I opened the cabinet (miditower), dont know why this is the first thing I always do, but then again, I usually end up with my head amongst the cables before long. Restarted the PC a couple of times. No mischievious sounds or beeps that could help me out. It actually sounded as it should, except there was nothing on the monitor (well, nothing is wrong since I got no "No signal" message either - so that might be something ;)). After checking that all the cables, adapters and controllers was firmly attached to the motherboard I concluded the first meeting with a "see ya" and the tower under my arm - heading for my workshop.
At the workshop everything worked as it should. I returned to my customer and tried it once more with his LCD but to no avail. My diagnosis, naturally enough, concluded with a defect LCD monitor. He found an old CRT (14" and more in sync with the rest of the equipment ;)) and was happy everything worked again.
The next day he called me again "It has happened again. The screen didn't work this morning!". After some head scratching we agreed that I should get him a new PC that he could use. There was no way I could make a new diagnostic without it costing more than a new PC would. After some searching I found a PC (this one also a 486DX), though without a NIC so I settled on using the networking card from the "old" PC. Since this was a project mostly based on cost efficiency I also used the "pre-configured" HD (also from the "old" PC). At this time he called me again "I sent my LCD monitor to [company] and they found nothing wrong with it?!".
To make a pretty long story short; after using the "new" PC for about a week the same problem occoured again, with his LCD.
I tested a new video adapter (PCI) and it didnt work, though I got it to work with the old ISA adapter (From the "original" PC).
Except the LCD, NIC and HD everything have been replaced. What now?
