Windows logic

[anivair.livejournal.com]

Quick instance of Windows Logic.

I unplug the monitor from the machine.
An error message pops up for me to read.

Nice.

Comments

[cybirea.livejournal.com]

... one hand clapping...

[toxico.livejournal.com]

I unplug and replug monitors all the time. Never seen that happen.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

honestly, i haven't either. Don't know what it's about, but it is a thing that happened.

[toxico.livejournal.com]

My wife worked for 3dfx right up until they closed their doors. She still insists to this day that plugging in a monitor while the computer is running will fry the video card and cause singularities to form.

Apparently messing with the VGA cable on the old Voodoo cards was a common cause of failure. So I can see that.

[azleaneo.livejournal.com]

That explains why I thought that (plugging in a monitor while the computer is running will fry the video card)for so long.

I outgrew that notion years ago, but still had a bit of nagging in the back of my head every time I would plug in a monitor with the computer on for some time after.

[kuang.livejournal.com]

It was only a problem if the fumbling around led the metal edge of the connector to short out two pins. Plugging it straight in or out wasn't a problem, other than perhaps initialisation hiccups.

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

That's not necessarily true - it all depends on the video card itself. If you make or break a powered connection, you may make some arc-y-sparkies; if you make some arc-y-sparkies; you may be producing a capacitance condition the manufacturer of the device did not plan for.

Same problem exists with PS/2 mouse/keyboard devices - the PS/2 port has 5V hot, and the plug / controller chips generally weren't designed very well to cope with hot-plugging/unplugging the devices. Most people refuse to believe this can be a problem, because the failure rate is only 1% or so... but if you've been bitten by that one hot-plug out of 100 that fried the PS/2 controller chip on the motherboard - ESPECIALLY if you got bit by it back in the day when USB wasn't an option - you damn sure learned your lesson about infrequent causes of failure. =)

[kuang.livejournal.com]

We had a batch of machuines on a school network I used to run where the PS2 fry rate after two years was close to one in five. When a keyboard 'lost' keys the teachers would never bother to report it, so the students would swap them around for themselves, and that's where the problems started.

If anyone in the UK has come across the bane of an education tech's life, Research Machines (RM), they'll not be surprised.

[dave-t-lurker.livejournal.com]

RM. *shudder*

[preserver3.livejournal.com]

Was the way, and cables even used to tell you that on the end of paper tags with small brown or black string tying them on.

You also weren't supposed to take a butter knife, wrap it in black electrical tape and pry up a bios chip so you could hot burn one that had become corrupted.

but we did it anyway.....

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

How did you know the error had popped up if the monitor wasn't connected? Or did you just discover it when you plugged it back in?

[anivair.livejournal.com]

that. also, I heard it.

[bothunter.livejournal.com]

That's right up there with "Keyboard failure or keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue"

Yup!

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

HDMI does have a hotplug pin. Most newer video cards simulate it on DVI by something like seeing if the DDC pins are floating, etc.

This bit me in a very strange way. Upgraded my video card, powered up... the BIOS and Windows splash screens came up fine, and safe mode video worked, but as soon as the ATI drivers kicked in, the monitor went to no signal.

I was thinking "fsck, card is DOA, and it's from the Circuit City liquidation"... but then I tried an analog VGA cable and it worked. When I was messing with that, I bumped the DVI cable and it came on, accompanied by the windows "hardware connect" sound, then went dead and I heard the disconnect sound.

Damn DVI cable was loose at the monitor end, but not enough to affect the video, just the monitor detection. Don't ask my why the Nvidia card didn't care.

[jupiter9.livejournal.com]

Well, you as a tech could have remoted into the computer because the user complains there's nothing on the screen.

The error message may well be added to the system log, so even if you don't see it when it's happening, you can see it later when troubleshooting the problem.

You might have two monitors so you see it on the monitor that is not unplugged from the computer.

I mean, seriously, what do you want it to do? Say "hey, who unplugged my monitor?" Now *that* would be creepy.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking I want it to say nothing on screen. System log? Sure. But an error popup that say that the monitor is unplugged is insipid. I'll stick with the popup message that works for when you unplug the monitor: ie a huge black image that takes up the whole screen.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

A multiple monitor system may have some displays out of immediate sight of the operator.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

There are also remote access situations where it would be useful and informative.