Blank Monitor

Pistonbroke57

This is my first post so be gentle with me !
Periodically my monitor remains blank when the desktop is turned on. The speakers in the monitor are making all the usual loading sounds and the power light on the monitor changes from standby orange to blue as it always has done but the monitor remains blank.
This of course renders it unusable and without any display,the only way I can turn off the machine is by pressing and holding the power button on the tower. I have tried turning the monitor off an on again but this makes no difference.
There is no pattern as to when this happens and if I leave the desktop turned off for a few hours. everything works fine (so far ) the next time I use it.
The tower is an Acer Aspire, The monitor Phillips around 6 years old and connection is via a VGA cable.
Any help will be much appreciated

JayCee

Tried replacing the VGA cable?

Pistonbroke57

Thanks for the reply. Yes I have. Hasn't resolved the issue.

DavidG1

Firstly how is the sound getting to the speakers in the monitor? a VGA cable doesn't normally carry sound, does it have a separate audio cable?
They only way to find the problem is to replace the monitor with  a known working one or if you have a Flatscreen TV these sometimes have a VGA input. You could temporarily hook up the VGA to that. If the same problem happens with a different monitor then the problem is obviously inside the tower.
I would then suggest you disconnect the tower from the mains, open up the case and if there is a separate graphics card check it is fully seated. If it looks OK or there is no separate graphics card the next step would be to add a cheap graphics card to the tower but without knowing further details it is impossible to say whether the tower can be upgraded. If you update your post with the model number of the Acer and the Phillips monitor we could advise further.