Boot Issue After 1/13/15 MS Updates

Yeah, I know it's not needed, but we run it to display our thousands of family pictures when the system isn't being used. A digital picture frame if you will.

gregrocker said:

See if the problem goes away with it temporarily turned off.

Try the Win7 backgrounds slideshow with that pictures folder.

No change with either of these suggestions. I have done some testing and recording of temperatures of the monitor unit and the problem is not temperature related either. I am wondering if something changed on the system regarding Extended Display Identification Data (EDID) and how it is being handled between the Lenovo L194 monitor and the Nvidia 7300LE graphics card. Both are rather old and I wonder if something has changed to cause them not to handle EDID properly during bootup. I'll be boning up on EDID and see what I learn. When I get some time, I'm going to plug the monitor into the mother board display output and see if that changes anything.

MS issued a patch (driver update) last night for the Nvidia 7300LE graphics card. It's tied to the January 2015 patches. I guess that explains why I started seeing it right after those updates. I won't know if it's corrected the problem until tomorrow morning. If it's good, I'll update this thread and close it.

Well, the driver update from MS did not correct the start problem. It still takes multiple off/on sequences of the monitor power switch to get past the "Starting Windows" screen and get the desktop loaded to the point that the display will stay. Again, after that point, everything works perfectly. I guess I'm going to have to break down and buy a new monitor. Tonight, I'm going to leave the system up and running, but I will power off the monitor. We'll see what happens when I turn it back on after 6 or 8 hours.

It took five off/on cycles to get the monitor to stay on this morning. The system was fine and the two applications that I left running (MSERT & Malwarebytes) had run to end of job and were displayed on the screen once I got it to stay on. This must be some sort of power issue with the monitor. I guess a new one is in order.

This morning, I turned the PC on and let it sit for 3 hours before attempting to log on. Since it had been off for about 8 hours, the monitor was blank, but powered on. After the 3 hour warm up, it only took one off/on cycle of the monitor power button to get past the logon and up and running. This has to be a hardware issue with the monitor itself. I'm calling it quits on this issue and will just wait until the device dies entirely.

Moderators: This thread probably belongs in the hardware forum. Feel free to move it. Thanks for the help.

gregrocker said:

Did you ever find another monitor to test?

No, the only one I had access to got sent to Goodwill for handling. I'm pretty sure it's the monitor, since it works fine if left on for any period of time. I wish I could defeat the automatic power saver function that's built into it, but there is nothing in the documentation that says it can be turned off.