One of the two monitor acting strange

Hey Guys,

I am having something strange happening on one of my PCs.
This is a 6 years old PC with win7 and two monitors.
The monitors have VGA connection but the graphic card has 2
DVI connections, so at the end of each cables I have an adapter.

This setup has worked for 6 years, now one of the monitors keeps going on and off and if it stays for few seconds on, you cannot see much.

I started some trouble shooting, tested a different monitor,  same thing.
One monitor at the time connected on the PC works, (both monitors)
I swapped all the cables and adapters and that is not the issue.

If I plug one monitor independently from which monitor or which connection on the graphic card it works,
as soon as I add the second, the second starts acting strange.

It's like if the card or the pc has no more juice to support two monitors.

I tried to get new drivers for the card, but I cannot find much,
the card is a Radeon x1650
The PC is not the one in the signature.
It's an Intel core 2 quad cpu Q8300 @2.50GHz
4GB ram - 64Bit



This PC was just fully formatted, all windows updates have now been done.
I have run out of brilliant ideas, so I need to go to brilliant people :-)

Addition: When both monitors are plugged in, one is just bad going on and off, but the other working is also not 100% ok, the graphic is deteriorated.

It sounds to me like your last sentence provided the answer.  I think your video card is failing.  But given the age of this system, I'm not certain I'd invest in a new card vs. a new computer.  And if your monitors only have VGA connectors, they're not very recent either.

Bill I thought you were my friend... :-)
Very well than, I guess someone it's going shopping...

Thanks.
Nic

Hi Nic,
I thought pretty hard about my last poast.  The last thing I like doing is 'spending' other people's money'!  But I am also a strong believer in not spending good money on really old equipment.  Sometimes 'being a friend' means telling the truth  . 

I'll let you in in a little secret, I think I was hopping for this answer, unconsciusly I think I really wanted a new PC.
I might post a couple a configurations to have them checked and see if they are worth.

Thanks a gain

We will do our best to help. Thanks.

I suspect one of two things: either the graphics card (GPU) is failing, or the power supply (PSU) can no longer keep up. It most likely will be the PSU due to the aged capacitors, but there's no way to confirm it without testing it. I have to agree with Bill that at some point it's best to replace the system. If you can find replacement parts on the cheap, then no harm done. But I suspect other components will begin letting you down sooner rather than later. The fact that you got 6 years out of the system is nothing to complain about.

If you decide on something new, wait until after July 29th. You may as well get Windows 10 with your new system.