Computing desk
< October 3	<< Sep \| October \| Nov >>	Current desk >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

October 4

THunderbird and Gmail

How do I get Thunderbird to use Gmail.?--86.187.171.66 (talk) 11:35, 4 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-and-gmail -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 11:44, 4 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Monitor problem

Every so often my monitor goes blank. If I switch it off and on again and then move the mouse or hit a key it comes back on again. Any idea what might be causing this? Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 22:59, 4 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

By 'blank' do you mean black or white? Does it happen while you're working or only when you haven't touched anything for a bit? —Tamfang (talk) 23:23, 4 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If it is one that automatically goes blank to save power when it hasn't been used for a period of time – it may be that power-saving circuit that is failing. Even back in the days of CRT monitors, the circuitry was so mystifying and difficult to get to, I ended throwing out an excellent Diamond monitor 'cause I couldn't fix it. These days I leave my chiropodists to sort out all my digital problems.--Aspro (talk) 23:28, 4 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

To troubleshoot, the first thing to do is to disable the "turn off the monitor to save power" setting on your system, if it isn't already, and see whether that stops it from occurring. If you don't know how, do a Web search. --47.138.165.200 (talk) 23:32, 4 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

By blank I meant black. I was wondering about the power-saving thing as it is meant to do that when left for a long time, but now I think about it I don't recall it doing that for ages. So it seems to go black when it isn't meant to, and not go black when it is meant to. That would accord with your suggestion. I may have to invest in a new one then, which is a shame as I'm used to this one, it sits nicely on my desk, and it's always such a faff unplugging and plugging in things. DuncanHill (talk) 23:35, 4 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Fear it is the monitor itself, so after disabling the power save (as suggested above) and should you find no improvement - try booting up with a Live Linux disc. If the problem still occurs it is not down to your current operating system. The only other things I can think of are: (1) check your cabling. (2) How old is it? Plus 3 years? The clock depends an a little button battery - its easy to find on the motherboard – it may just have enough power to keep the crystal oscillating but not enough to let the monitor know the is computed up and running - replace battery. (3) Use a can of freezer on the motherboard and internal cabling whilst repeatedly pressing the space bar to see if the mother board or internal connectors have a dry joint. If you do have a dry joint, the expansion/contraction produced by the freezer may make the monitor switch on again. If so -apply soldering iron. PS. Whist looking inside, take the opportunity to vacuum out the fluff from the heat sink of the CPU. --Aspro (talk) 00:40, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No improvement on disabling power save. I have no idea what a Live Linux disc is or where I might find one!. I will check the cables. PC is 3 years old or so, monitor rather older. I will have a clean inside and look for the battery. I suspect soldering my PC may be beyond my level of competence. I have noticed that when it happens the light on the monitor power button stays green, but it should go yellow if it shuts down for no use. DuncanHill (talk) 00:45, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. Think the best Live Linux (in your case) is probably a very small one like Knopix. As your computer is currently up the spout. Get a neighbors teenager (he or she – as girls are good at these things too) to down load it onto their computer and burn it onto a disc or pen-drive for you. Have them then boot your computer up with Knopix – and see if the problem persist. The advantage of a Live CD (and here is a list of List of live CDs) is that you don't instal them. They run externally and so don't affect your installed Operating System in any way. After, unplug the pen-drive or take out the Live disc from the CD tray and your computer is exactly like it was before. As for soldering,... one step at a time! Lets exclude the simple things first. It is encouraging to hear that the light stays green. P.S. Whilst you are at it, you might like try to to test out Linux Mint on a live CD. Unless you are using applications that will only run on Windows you'll find that Mint is easier and less time consuming to maintain. If you just surf, email, word-process, image-manipulate (photoshop), etc. There is no earthy point in using pain in the ass Windows any more. --Aspro (talk) 02:08, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Generally, if a user asks a technical question, it is not considered good netiquette to recommend that they throw everything away and/or install a different operating system. If you don't know how to debug the user's technical problem, or if you don't like a particular software, refrain from answering the question. Nimur (talk) 18:35, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody's suggesting to throw out the OS. Also, using a clean OS bootable from a disk is a good diagnostic tool - Aspro's not wrong there: if it works fine with a Linux disk, then we can safely assume the problem is not hardware. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:43, 6 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not certain that you even have a problem - are you sure this is not "correct behavior"? Can you post your monitor's make and model? Have you checked your system's power saving preferences and features? Nimur (talk) 18:35, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. The first thing that came to mind was that this is screensaver behavior. Akld guy (talk) 19:18, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If it were screensaver behaviour it wouldn't need the switching off and on again bit. It also wouldn't happen at random intervals, even when typing, and I probably wouldn't have said above that it wasn't behaving as expected. I might not know what a Live Linux disc is or be confident in my soldering abilities but I do know wanted from unwanted behaviour on a machine I've been using for years. DuncanHill (talk) 19:50, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please ignore those who give non-helpful answers. Responding only encourages them. Booting from a live CD really is a good step in troubleshooting this, because it completely rules out any sort of software issue. I once had a system that kept going blank screen at seemingly random times. I booted good old Tiny Core Linux from a CD-ROM (it also boots from a thumb drive if you don't have a CD drive) and the problem disappeared, only to come back when I booted Windows again. Turned out that it was a corrupted display driver. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:24, 6 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There is only one way that you can find the answer: by experimenting. Try to connect the monitor to a different PC and/or a different monitor to your PC and observe what will happen. Ruslik_Zero 20:57, 6 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the cable or connections to the cable could be the problem, so trying using a different cable (and try another cable type, such as HDMI versus VGA, aka D-SUB). And check if the power cable to the monitor is loose. There are different types of power cords, and the wrong type for that monitor might give you an intermittent connection. If it is loose, perhaps you can secure it better temporarily, using tape, until you get the proper power cord. StuRat (talk) 17:06, 8 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]