Monitor switches off

Hello,

I have been running an acer external monitor with my dell xps m1710 laptop for the past few months. 2 days ago after a reboot the monitor switched itself off, as if it went into standby? I tried rebooting the laptop several times since and the monitor comes on so i can see the black windows start up screen, then after 2 secs it goes off again ( the standby light stays on ).

Any ideas what could be causing this?

Thanks.

does the laptop start up correctly when the monitor is not connected?

Hi John,

Yes it does.

then you either have a faulty monitor, or the screen resolution is set too high for the monitor to use
As the machine starts up, with the monitor pluged in, tap the F8 key till you get a menu. The select the "VGA" or "640 x 480" option, that should get you into windows as low resolution. Then adjust the settings