Got a new OLED monitor, and my PC wouldn’t start anymore. It’d power on - all the lights came on etc. - but nothing would happen and the monitor would go into standby after a few seconds, saying there was no signal. I have a program I use for remote access via my phone, so I’d check that to see if the PC actually made it into Windows or not, but it didn’t. Plus tapping the power button would switch off the PC again instantly, as opposed to having to hold it down like normal, so it seems it didn’t get past stage 1 of bootsville.
After MANY hours of futile fiddling, I discovered that it was as simple as starting the PC with the monitor off, and after the first few seconds, to turn on the monitor. Everything’s fine after that, until I need to start my PC again the next day. I need to turn off the monitor, press my PC power button, then after a few seconds turn on the monitor.
What the hell is going on here?
Specs:
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti
- CPU: Intel Core i9 9900K
- RAM: 32GB Corsair DDR4 (rockin’ a small country’s GDP these days)
- Monitor: Samsung Odyssey G81SF
- Motherboard: Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO WIFI-CF
My previous monitor was connected with a display port cable, and the new one is with a fancypants HDMI one.
It’s obviously a minor issue to have to turn off the monitor before booting, but I’m curious as to why it’s happening in the first place. If there’s something I can do to fix it, all the better. But it’s so bizarre.
Cheers!
Some newer monitors can support stuff like HDMI-CEC, HDCP (aka DRM to prevent copying video feeds), and EDID handshakes. Your motherboard, especially if it’s older, is probably getting hung up trying to resolve these during boot.
You can go into the monitor’s settings and try disabling extra features like HDMI-CEC, upgrade your motherboard bios, switch to display port (or display port->HDMI cable), or try disabiling legacy boot. There’s probably some other stuff to try, but that should give you somewhere to start.
You can also gather more info, like if it happens with other HDMI monitors (specifically newer monitors only or all HDMI).