New PC, old monitor???

[mycatoscar]

I bought a new PC today from PC world.

Brought it home, plugged it in to old monitor which says no signal!

What to do? It's all plugged in properly and monitor quarks fine with other PC

Works! Not quarks!

I would check the pins are all straight on the cable.

It may be a refresh rate issue, not sure how you can set that though when not being able to see anything.

If the monitor is fine with the other PC, using the same cable, that does tend to narrow it down to the new PC. You've checked the cable is seated properly on the new PC: I think that's all you can reasonably do.
Have a word with PC World. See if they've got any other suggestions.

My techie friend checked the new pc spec online for me and says the video card is linked to the dvi port rather than the VGA, my old monitor (2003!) has only a VGA to VGA cable but I see pc world does VGA to dvi adapters so will try that today and if no luck then back it will go.

You'll probably need to download the monitor drivers to your new computer too.

Nope it all worked fine with the adapter. Thanks everyone

Good result! :-)

Ermm - anyone else curious what you were plugging the old screen into, if new PC only has DVI out, not VGA??

Do you mean you were plugging into a VGA connection that was physically there as a result of it being built onto the motherboard, but was disabled by you having a dedicated graphics card?

Yes just that lazy dog! Believe it or not!

The new pc has VGA and dvi ports but the monitor display only works off the dvi.

Im no expert but even I wouldn't expect the monitor to work unless it was plugged in!

I think there are at least 4 different video "standards" being used. All makes money for the firms selling adaptors (and hate to say it, but PC World is perhaps one of the more expensive places).

Know it makes sense to go back there, when you are pushed for time, and even more so when the original was purchased there (though I think it might be worth going back and arguing that you should either have been told the output "only" works on the DVI port, or given a cable, in the hope that you can get all or some of the cost of the adaptor refunded - the fact it has a VGA port but it didn't work "out of the box" (or perhaps at all, if adding a video card caused it to be disabled) is a fact the buyer ought to be told (in my view).

I tend to go for computers which have HDMI out so would not be buying if it wasn't supported, but even then, some TVs are more "fussy" than others when using HDMI and some won't show any picture from one of my PCs :(