Samsung SyncMaster 225BW problems turning on, displays a gray screen

[biscuit2016]

I bought a Samsung SyncMaster 225BW at a thrift store. It works great, once it's on. Getting it turned on, however, is a pain.

When the computer is turned on, or wakes from sleep, the front on/off switch lights up blue and blinks, but the screen remains black. Restarting with the on/off blue switch at this point has no effect, the screen still remains black.

Fiddling with the power plug, the on/off switch at the back of the monitor by the power plug, and the DVI or VGA plugs, in no particular order that I've determined, seems to "jog" the monitor into actually turning on. However, at that point, the monitor always goes through 2 stages first before regaining full functionality.

Stage 1: The monitor displays a gray screen, with striping visible. Restarting the monitor with the blue on/off front button leads to stage 2.
Stage 2: The monitor displays a gray screen, with striping visible, that slowly brightens. As the monitor brightens, the striping disappears. The monitor eventually ends up displaying an even, lighter-colored gray screen. After restarting the monitor once more with the blue on/off button, the monitor now appears completely normal and displays my desktop as expected.

There are no problems with a different monitor when connected to my PC, so I doubt anything on the PC is the problem.

I've tried:
-Changing the power cable for the monitor, same thing
-Changing the VGA cable to a DVI cable, same thing
-Installing Samsung's driver for this monitor, same thing

Any ideas on what this might be, or how to fix this? Obviously a short-term way to deal with it is basically to just never turn the monitor off, but I'm hoping for something longer-term! I don't mind opening up the monitor to poke around.

Thanks!

 

[ffg7]

open up the monitor & you'll see 2 boards, a video controller & a power board. look at the silver flat top can shaped capacitors to see if any are domed or leaking brown stuff. that is how I fixed my 20" Samsung Frankenstein monitor & this 24" Samsung monitor I got from a customer.

 

[biscuit2016]

Yep -- when I opened it up the capacitors were all domed. For anyone else reading this with similar problems -- FYI, there are capacitor replacement kits being sold on Amazon for varying tv/monitor models, at fairly reasonable prices. Since I know jack-all about capacitors, I just bought one of these, followed a random "how to replace capacitors" youtube tutorial, and now I have a like-new monitor!

ffg7, thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

 

[ffg7]

no problem, teach & learn.