"Out of Frequency Range" Error Message

[yolland]

Lately whenever our electricity temporarily goes out (unfortunately not uncommon around here, especially in thunderstorm season), when we turn our PC back on afterwards, it won't boot up; instead we get a mostly black screen with a color-spectrum thingie and an error message below it saying "OUT OF FREQUENCY RANGE." We haven't found any 'solution' for this other than gamely trying over and over to reboot, until finally for no apparent reason it decides to cooperate. (In fact, we usually have to literally unplug the computer each time to get it to turn back off, so that we can try again.) I tried Googling for advice, but all that I've found so far about this error message seems to refer to situations where it appeared only when someone was trying to run some audio or video program, and therefore all the 'what-to-do' instructions were written under the assumption that the computer was otherwise up and running, which is not the case with us. Anyone else ever encountered this problem?

 

[Liesje]

Maybe the monitor's refresh rate is borderline too high? Refresh rate is measure in Hz, which is a unit of frequency, right?

To change it, right click on your desktop and go to Display Properties > Settings tab > Advanced button > Monitor tab. There should be a drop-down. Generally, the higher the refresh rate the better (lower ones - at least with me - make the screen look like it's flashing and make text on white hard to read), but it's possible it can be set too high for the monitor.

Oh, also before you do the above, make sure you have the right, updated video drivers and driver for your monitor installed. If you are using generic plug-and-play, you may not have as many options.

If this is the case, you are right that you can't really do much until the computer "works" again, b/c you need to see what you're doing to change these settings. Unless you have another, better monitor you can temporarily connect to.

I could be wrong, but this would be my first guess.

 

[yolland]

If you are using generic plug-and-play

Hmm, looks like I am but I don't even know what that means. How would that cause this type of problem and what should I do about it?