Out of scan range - Help

[PCdingbat]

Hello All,

Let me start by saying I'm in 1 of the disaster zones caused by the storm Sandy. We lost power, heat, and everything else for weeks. Back then I had a custom built PC. One night the power came back on. I live in a small apt building of 20 units. So the power came on and I turned my PC on. It booted up into Win XP fine. So I then went to Hotmail, and everything was still fine. And then the power went off again. Soon we had Firemen here, and they said something in the basement caught fire. They put out the fire and we were without electricity about 4 more weeks.

Finally we got power again. In the interim, I was given two used laptops. These both work ok.

But when I tried to turn on my desktop PC, I wasn't even getting a signal to the monitor at all. I opened it up, and I took out the graphics card and cleaned the slot it goes into. After that, sometimes it sent a signal to the monitor and sometimes not. But it wouldn't boot into Win.

I got various error messages, and I'll find them if you want me to. But eventually what would happen was I'd get a black screen with a blue rectangular box that said in white Cap letters OUT OF SCAN RANGE.

Meanwhile a good online friend bought me a refurbished HP. This 2nd Desktop is running Win7. So I hooked it up and tried to turn it on. Win starts to boot up but then I get a black screen saying Windows didn't shut down right. I get several choices, one is start in Safe Mode, or start in Safe Mode with command prompt, or start normally. I tried to let it start normally, and I get that blue box with OUT OF SCAN RANGE. So both PC Desktops make me get the OUT OF SCAN RANGE message, but if I connect the monitor to one of the laptops, it works fine.

All my equipment is old. The monitor is a 17" Dell with a trinitron picture tube.

PC 1 is hard to describe because it's custom built.

PC 2 is the refurbished HP. It's running Win7 and I know almost nothing about W7. I got into it once with Safe Mode. I didn't know what to do, so I looked around. It has a 78 GB HDD and 3 GB of RAM. It's supposed to have an Intel Core Duo2 CPU, but I couldn't confirm that. It's very tall, about 18". It also seems to have room for 6 more circuit cards, from looking at the back.
The monitor connects to it vertically rather than horizontally. I've never seen this before.

Does anyone think they can help me?

I would prefer to eventually get back into PC 1 because it has all my personal data on it. But for now, I want to see if I can get PC 2 to work.

As I said, I'm a computer dummy, but maybe someone can help me?

Ding

[SARGE]

I hope this will help. Looks like an easy fix.

How to solve out of scan range error - How To - Windows XP

[PCdingbat]

Thanks Sarge, but this still doesn't make sense to me.

I read a bunch of answers that were with the link you gave me. I'm still confused. They all seem to be saying the problem lies with the monitor, not the PCs. If the problem is with the monitor, why does it work when I hook it up to the laptop? And the laptop is running Win7 just like the refurbished PC is.

Do you think it matters whether I'm using XP or W7?

[ltpdttcdft]

The "out of scan range" error means the computer is sending the screen a signal with too high a resolution and/or refresh rate for it to handle. You should be able to boot into safe mode, which by default uses a low resolution.

Can you at least boot into safe mode?

[PCdingbat]

Yes, with PC2, that's the refurbished one running Win7, I did get into safe mode. I'm pretty sure I can do it again. But then what? I really am a PC dummy, and Win7 is fairly new to me.

So once I'm in there on safe mode what do I do?

[SARGE]

Hook everything up you want to run (original setup running XP) and try what it says in the link. That includes booting into "safe mode". Write it all down if need be. Piece of cake. Until you try it, you can't troubleshoot any further. I bet you a dollar to a donut it will fix it

[glc]

On the XP box, start it and press F8 to get the boot menu, start it in VGA mode.

Right click on the desktop, choose Properties. Choose Settings and move the resolution slider to 800x600. Then choose Advanced, then Monitor, and set the refresh rate to 60 Hz.

On the 7 box, in safe mode, right click on the desktop, choose Screen Resolution. Set that to 800x600. Choose Advanced Settings, then Monitor, and set the refresh rate to 60 Hz.

Those settings are far from ideal, but it should let you boot in normal mode, where you can make further adjustments.

[PCdingbat]

I'll probably try Win7 box first since it's all hooked up. However, the last time I tried it in safe mode I noticed the resolution was set for 800x600. I just didn't know about the refresh rate.

Could someone tell me what does VGA mean?

[SARGE]

If you ever want to try and fix original problem, why don't you try the above? You wrote you really need PC1 (XP). Otherwise you keep dancing around the issue. Your computer is the boss over your monitor, kinda like you sitting there with the remote to your TV. Forget Safe Mode in Win7 for now, try the above in original issue.

VGA can be read all night by doing a Google search, something like "what is vga".

[PCdingbat]

Hi All,

I tried to fix the Win 7 PC first because it was all set up. The XP PC is in pieces, and I have to put it back together. I'll be working on that.

Here's what happened with 7. I got into safe mode fine. I right clicked the desktop and the resolution was already set at 800x600.
So I clicked Advanced Settings and Monitor. But where it says Screen refresh rate, there's a drop down menu bar, and it only says one thing

Use Hardware Default Setting

So I tried raising the screen resolution 1 notch up. I shut it off. Waited 15 minutes, and now I'm back to OUT OF SCAN RANGE.

Maybe I should have mentioned this is a 17" CRT Monitor.

I'll reassemble the XP Box.

[glc]

On Windows 7, instead of starting in Safe Mode, enable low-resolution video (640x480). This is on the same screen you used to get to Safe Mode. Then follow my previous instructions.

A 17" CRT should be able to handle 1024x768 at 60 Hz. If you can tell me the exact model, I can tell you what the optimum settings are.

[PCdingbat]

Hi Guys,

I've been a very busy Dingbat indeed. The monitor is a 1997 Dell Ultrascan 1000HS series. Model D1025HTX.

However, I have put most of the XP Box back together. The XP machine is very much a custom made PC. What that means is before the storm the XP had 2 physical HDDs, and each one has partitions. (I was talked into doing that) Anyway, after the storm I took 1 of the HDDs out. Now I don't remember which power wire was connected to it. I think it shouldn't matter because Windows and all the program files are on the HDD that's still in the machine.

So I pressed the power button. The PC made 1 beep (which I think it always did) and I started pressing F8 hoping for safe mode. But that didn't happen. Instead I have a black screen with white letters, and this is what it's saying:

Verifying DMI Pool Data ............
Boot from CD :

Invalid system disk
Replace the disk, and then press any key
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

Below this I have a flashing _

I've tried doing control-alt-delete, and various other keys, and nothing ever happens. I just did it now, and it briefly told me what my graphics card is. Then it flashed Power Spec and Intel Inside, and went back to what I said above.

This is interesting because it's something new. Usually the screen goes solid black, and the monitor goes to power saving mode as the green light goes to yellow. Strange.

I built this PC with help of a friend I once had. I then installed WinXP Pro on it, and I had to add many other programs. The 1 friend who convinced me to make partitions, said it would be good if I caught a virus, or if I had to reinstall Windows. But without his help I don't know if I can do all that again.

Any ideas?

[glc]

Remove the CD from the drive.

[PCdingbat]

There isn't an CD's in the Drive. This PC has a CD/DVD rewriter, and it's empty. It also has a floppy drive, and there's nothing in there neither. And then there's the 1 HDD with 3 partitions on it.

It's very curious that it's not saying OUT OF SCAN RANGE anymore.

If this was Win 98 or Win ME, I'd say Windows has become so corrupt that a reinstall is the only fix.

It's too bad I don't have the friend anymore who convinced me to make the partitions. Because I wonder if I put the Win XP disc in, will it see the 3 partitions and only reformat the Partition with Windows on it, or will it see all 3 partitions as 1 HDD and reformat all of it? If it does I lose all my data.

And I'm not sure if I remember how to do it. Although right now I can be online with this little laptop, and work on the Desktop PCs at the same time.

But I am still not very knowledgeable about how these machines work.

[glc]

Maybe the boot manager is on the drive you disconnected. Put it back in and make sure both drives are connected.

[ltpdttcdft]

Also older computer may have IDE hard drive connectors (really wide ribbon)
If so you need to connect the "master" drive to the END of the cable and the "slave" drive to the MIDDLE of the cable.

(but the power cable order doesn't matter)

Oh and DO NOT format anything! It's not worth deleting all your data over a screen problem.

[glc]

If the drives are IDE, you also have to watch the jumper settings. Using 80 wire cables, they have to be jumpered Cable Select.

[PCdingbat]

They are IDE type drives. That PC was partially built for me by a friend who's very good at building PC's. He built it with 3 separate ribbon cables. One for DVD and floppy drives, and then 2 more ribbon cables, one for each HDD. The drive in the machine now is the master, the one I removed is the slave. I remember where to connect the slave drive to the ribbon cable. What I don't remember is which power wire I connect to it. The power wires have the white plastic on the ends that plug into the drive. I forgot which one was for the drive. One is marked P2. But I don't think that's the one. Nevertheless, the PC should work without that drive. It's mostly pictures and music files on it.

[glc]

It doesn't MATTER which power connector you use as long as it fits.