Yesterday I got a shock. I switched on at the mains and my monitor was dead. Normally I get a brief Dell logo and then a built-in screensaver. After a bit of switching on and off, it did come on and was perfectly OK for the rest of the day. Today I can't get it to work at all. I'm annoyed because that was my best monitor. The one I'm using now has a smaller screen and, though the image is sharp, everything looks small and fiddly.

I know that cathode ray tubes wear out but I always thought that flat screens don't because they don't get hot.

what maker / model is it?

it would be easier to troubleshoot it.

They're just as prone to failure as any other electronic device. The screen itself might not get hot, but circuitry warms up when there is current flowing through it. Over time, soldered joints can become brittle and eventually crack from repeatedly warming up and cooling down. Some of the joints in modern circuitry don't have much solder in them.

It's a Dell SE197FP. It's quite old but it's never given me any trouble before.

Flat screens DO wear out, but how and when depends upon the underlying technology (There are at least three different kinds that I know about - okay, at least by name) and how fine the quality of construction. In addition, ALL electronics age and fail, so the attached circuitry and connectors must be considered.

This sounds like you have a connector or physical component failure. Had you really SMOKED something you could not have gotten it back with a few retries. That, however, does not mean that it is certainly something worth fixing, or easy to fix even if you can figure out what went south on you. It often costs more to recover a monitor than simply replacing it.

Have you a resource for inexpensive evaluation and repair?

I would check if the backlight has failed. Maybe if you have bright light on it, you can get enough passive illumination to see if the rest is working.

No, I don't know of any repair shops. Do they still even exist? Who repairs things nowadays?

What annoys me far more is that there are no nearby shops where I could buy a new one. Maplins closed down years ago and now the Currys/PC World has moved off to Queensbury. Not much use if you live in Harrow and don't have a car. But, to be fair, it was old when I found it.

Shining an LED torch on it shows nothing.

Clean cables and connectors with cleaning spray...

Mine is a +10 year Philips and is working as day one. As do all the monitors we here have "sold" with the builds made to family and friends. Very high degree of reliability.

Only problem has been a loose cable...

But of course, everything has an end date.

I just switched it on again (without connecting it to the computer) and it showed the screensaver as normal. So I powered off the computer, reconnected the monitor and rebooted, and it works normally! What the heck is going on here?

PS: I greatly prefer this monitor to the one I was using this morning.

The lights go bad, and the little inverter board which is powering them can go bad. I usually take a LED strip and replace the lights with LEDs. It is about 3 hours of work, the whole panel comes apart. Also, capacitors die in built-in power supplies. If your monitor went dark and then came back on later it indicates the lights are about to give up the ghost. LED conversion is in order. Too bad you live on the other side of pond, I'd do it for you for free.

Edit: the lights what go bad are called CCFL lights.

thats what crossed my mind too.

See post no.7

Experimental evidence for un-caused events?

Did it follow you home?

I actually use a 24 inch HP monitor I found when I was walking my dog and lugged back for about a mile.

I just checked up the model number. It's 17 inches. I found it on the street as I did most of my kit. But that was a long time ago.