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I had a laptop running Windows 7 connected to an external monitor with a plain old double-headed VGA cable this morning, and everything was working fine. In the afternoon, there was a brief power outage in my area. It was just a second long, but that was long enough for all my devices to shut off (except for the laptop itself, which was plugged in but had a fully charged battery). Both the monitor and computer were plugged into a surge protector. I didn't have to reset the protector, but in case it matters, its clamping voltage is 330V (for LN) or 400V (for LG and NG) and its suppression rating is 4350J.

After the monitor came back on, it wouldn't display anything from the laptop anymore. Nothing went visibly or audibly wrong during the outage, like sparks or smoke or anything like that.

I tried plugging the monitor into another computer, with the same cable, and it worked. I tried plugging a different monitor into the laptop, and nothing came up. (The computer's exact words were "Another display not detected.") Forcing the computer to output to VGA anyways brings up a second window in the Screen Resolution menu, but still nothing on the actual monitor.

I suspect that something is wrong with the VGA port itself, but I don't know how to confirm that, or more importantly, how to fix it. What can I do to get signal out to my monitor again?

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  • I saw LN, LG and NG on the surge protector tech specs but I have no idea what they mean so I didn't know which one to report. Can someone explain?
    – ArPaCereal
    Jul 29, 2014 at 2:56
  • L-N, L-G, & N-G Protection: The electrical system in your home is typically a three-wire system. The wires are the ground, line (hot), and neutral. A power surge can exist across any of these wires. The surge protection should protect against surges coming through any of these wires. When a surge protection device indicates the following, you know all wires are protected: Line to Neutral (L-N), Line to Ground (L-G), and Neutral to Ground (N-G). Source: naturalhandyman.com/iip/infelectrical/infsurgeprotect.html
    – jski
    Jul 29, 2014 at 2:57

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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I solved this with the "power button trick". First I shut the laptop down completely, then pressed the power button ten times, then held the power button down for 15 seconds. (Supposedly only one of those two is necessary, but I didn't know which, so I did both.) When I turned the computer back on, it connected to the monitor like nothing was ever wrong.

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    Thanks to Psycogeek for suggesting this solution in comments! (The comments are now deleted, hopefully just for cleanup and not because of privacy issues or anything.)
    – ArPaCereal
    Jul 30, 2014 at 21:13
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I just had nearly this exact situation occur to me, the only difference being that the laptop was upgraded from Win7 to Win10 a few months back.

This may end up sounding obvious but it took a whole day and asking several people for help before anyone suggested it: I had to press the "projector key" on my computer (Fn + F7 in my case) before any external monitor would work. I tried the power button trick earlier on and it didn't seem to make a difference; not sure if I needed to do both or if just the projector key would have been enough.

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I mean, you've pretty much proven the problem; the VGA output on your laptop is dead. You can send it to the manufacturer or a refurbishment center, but since it's on Windows 7, I'm guessing it's possibly not worth the repair, which will likely be replacing the motherboard.

It's possible, but unlikely, that something somehow simultaneously happened with the drivers, so you might as well try reinstalling the video drivers for kicks. You could also try a VGA-to-DVI adapter, but I can't imagine that would help anything. Just trying to help you be thorough.

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