Samsung Syncmaster SA300 signal detection issue

[Cheolsu]

Hello,
Here is the series of events: I bought a syncmaster SA300, used it for 11 months. One day I unplug the monitor and go use the printer with my laptop in another room, then I put my laptop back in my room and go to Japan. I come back from Japan and reconnect my monitor to my laptop, but when I turn my laptop on the display isn't working.

Power works, the monitor is able to display pixels, but just not pixels from my computer output.

At times when I was trying to fix it I'd get a "no signal detected" text waving around my monitor (or something similar. I'm paraphrasing from Korean), but now that I made sure all the drivers are up to date and set on "digital", what I get is a repetition of 4 different screens, each one lasts a duration of time between 1 and 1.5 second. First one is complete black, second one is very large bars of red - green - blue - white - in incremental brightness levels, third one is complete grey, fourth is complete white.

Also, I tried using the monitor with the same VGA cable on a friend's laptop, and the same thing happened (colored bars displaying on screen)

So, from what I gather, the monitor functions properly as far as its display functions go, but there's something wrong somewhere in the process between my monitor sending off image signals, and my monitor "reading" and displaying them.

What are some probable causes and fixes to this issue? Is it likely to be a problem deep in the hardware that a layman would not be able to fix, or could something trivial like getting a new VGA cable solve the issue?

Thank you in advance.

 

[inzone]

Have you tried a new cable ? Have you changed any settings in the laptop ? Can you go into the control pane and under appearence and personalization select Display and connect to external monitor.

 

[Cheolsu]

Hello inzone thank you for your quick reply,
I have not changed any settings on my laptop. In the display options panel, I only see a label called "Connect to a projector" but no such thing for monitors. I have thoroughly gone through the display options to make sure I didn't miss anything.

I will try getting a hold on another VGA cable as soon as possible and I'll post an update here once I've done so.

 

[inzone]

With a laptop there has to be an option to connect to external monitor. The troubling thing is that your friends laptop is doing the same thing and that points to the cable or monitor.
If your friends laptop could display a picture on the monitor then I woould say that it's your laptop but when two different laptops get the same thing it narrows it down to the cable and the monitor.

 

[Cheolsu]

With a laptop there has to be an option to connect to external monitor. The troubling thing is that your friends laptop is doing the same thing and that points to the cable or monitor.
If your friends laptop could display a picture on the monitor then I woould say that it's your laptop but when two different laptops get the same thing it narrows it down to the cable and the monitor.

Ah, there is indeed a tab called "Connect to an external display". The reason why I could not find it is because it is not labeled as such from the control panel settings, and from the file path being displayed when you access it. Nevertheless, I had already been using it, just not aware that it is what you referred to as "Connect to monitor" tab.

I can get my laptop to tell me I am connected to 2 displays (my laptop default, and the external monitor). With this being so, I can choose to extend my displays and I'll be able to drag applications out of my laptop display into what should be my external monitor.

I agree with your reasoning and I think it's probably the cable, even though it sounds to me like it should be unlikely. After reading up a little bit on this monitor, I see that it there are almost no circumstances in which a monitor can correctly perform factory-set color tests while failing to display data that it correctly receives from a display cable.

I can't wait to get another cable and I'm very excited at the prospect that my monitor might function correctly. I've been too careless to fix this for over a month, and it will be nice to stare at something bigger than the 17" laptop display.