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When I power on my old monitor Samsung Syncmaster 740n, it needs needs 2-3 min to power on. When it turns on, it works fine.

What can be wrong with it and if it possible how to fix it?

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  • 1
    2-3 seconds? 2-3 minutes? 2-3 tries? ...
    – Hennes
    Dec 4, 2015 at 7:53
  • @Hennes Sorry, missed that. I mean 2-3 minutes.
    – vasili111
    Dec 4, 2015 at 14:39
  • Does it warm up in two first few minutes? (thinking of a broken trace here).
    – Hennes
    Dec 4, 2015 at 14:42

1 Answer 1

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Almost inevitably this will be due to failing capacitors in the power supply section of your monitor. These can 'dry out' (the commonly used term) and become less effective, with the usual symptoms being some mix of:

  1. a failure to power on
  2. cycling power on and off
  3. taking a longer time to power up

This is a common problem with electronics, particularly from a certain time where poor quality control and/or penny-pinching in the supply chain caused a large rise in such failures around 10-15 years ago.

The problem is that the symptoms usually only appear well outside of any warranty period, and often even after manufacturer support for a model has ended.

Happily, this is usually an easy enough thing to fix. Any competent electronic repair shop should be able to diagnose and replace the capacitors. Although they are only a few pennies each, the labour costs may mean this is uneconomic though, given the costs of a new, likely superior, monitor.

If you have a soldering iron and a sense of adventure you may want to try this yourself though. There exist many self-help guides on the internet (www.badcaps.net is a good place to start), and indeed I had much success doing this myself when my printer started playing up a couple of years ago.

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  • Also until monitor turns on if I get to monitor very close I hear some very low noise from monitor. After monitor turns on noise disappears. Is that also points to the failure of capacitors?
    – vasili111
    Dec 7, 2015 at 6:29
  • The difficult to turn on is on the first power on on. If I will power on it and then off, it turns on normally. But If I will wait several hours and then power on it again, I will have to wait 2-3 mins before it turns on.
    – vasili111
    Dec 7, 2015 at 6:33
  • Yes, the caps will retain charge when powered down (this is what they are meant to do) which means if you switch it back on soon after turning it off there will likely be enough charge left to allow it to start (the noise will be inductors or similar in the PS stage). After a longer period there isn't enough charge and the power supply will shut down and try again. If you're lucky, this will repeat until the caps have enough charge to start the monitor. Eventually though it is likely they will degrade to a point where they cannot retain enough charge at all though.
    – Lunatik
    Dec 7, 2015 at 10:03

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