Question A unique problem: Computer that's having difficulties trying to connect to a videotron/LED DISPLAYS, but the videotron works using other PC's

[TrippyFries]

Very sorry for the long text, English is not my first language and It's better to write everything in more detail than very least amount of detail.

A bit of context, this pc was recently made (Windows 11, Ryzen 5 5600, and intel ARC A580, 32gb) for my church to host videos on an LED Monitor (which in my country we call it a Videotron) during sermons, but when the computer is connected to the box that connects to all other electronics ,i.e speakers and the videotron, and it does not display anything at all, the computer reads the HDMI/DP of both monitors, and it was working a few days ago, but recently it just does not work or connect at all.

And whilst we were troubleshooting the issue, (like formatting the PC until we revert back to windows 10 since its more stable, taking it home to test in a home environment, which turned out ok as everything was being displayed correctly) we tried to connect the videotron to another PC, and weirdly enough it works on that PC.

And afterwards we tried consulting the guy that works with videotrons and he said that "we need an Nvidia GPU" since he works with nvidia computers when running the videotron, and when we were to test on even more PC's it was also working, and coincidentally it was also using Nvidia GPUs, and so before trying anything else, such as buying another GPU, I lend them my GPU, which is a GTX 1660 TI.

lo and behold, it still does not work, at this point we have no clue on what to do, the current weird thing is that, it detects the HDMI, and the videotron works when using the "duplicate" option on the display setting, but when we need to change it into "extend these display" it just goes into a black screen, and what's even weirder is that when i went into the BIOS whilst the display is still extended, the BIOS appeared over at the videotron instead.

I'm very sorry for the lack of image as I was not there at the church to take any pictures, but this is basically what the videotron looks like but a lot smaller and inside of a room, I will take more pictures tomorrow to give everyone a better visualization on what's going on.

 

[Ralston18]

First:

"but when the computer is connected to the box that connects to all other electronics ,i.e speakers and the videotron,"

What is that "box"?

Second:

Press "WIN" + "P" to open the Project menu and the choices: PC Screen only, Duplicate, Extend, Second screen only. Ensure that the choice is correct

Third:

Provided that I correctly understand the described circumstances, if it was all working correctly a few days ago then I do not understand the need for an NVIDIA GPU.

On the computer in question: Right click an empty area of the desktop.

A menu should appear with the choice "Show more options" - click that.

Another menu should appear with the choice NVIDIA Control Panel. Select that. Or if some other GPU manufacturer - check that Control Panel.

Take a look at the settings and verify if all settings are configured as they should be.

Overall thought being that somewhere, somehow, there was an accidental keyboard action (shortcut) that may have directly changed the video output on the computer in question.

Lastly, your English is fine. Still no harm in being detailed - details matter.

 

[TrippyFries]

First:
What is that "box"?

Hi! Thank you for the reply, after asking about what the box is, they said that its a video processor called "Novastar" which looks like this,

They said the function is to convert the video data and be sent into the multiple LED display panel going from a single LED panel into one that can display a video at a big resolution using tens if not hundreds of these panels

second:

Press "WIN" + "P" to open the Project menu and the choices: PC Screen only, Duplicate, Extend, Second screen only. Ensure that the choice is correct

for this one I'm not entirely sure yet but I was video calling the guy that was on the PC, and I did instruct him to show me that the display is in extend and duplicate, but that was through the "display setting" in the windows option. Which is how I learnt that the extend is a blank screen and the duplicate is appearing.

Third:

Provided that I correctly understand the described circumstances, if it was all working correctly a few days ago then I do not understand the need for an NVIDIA GPU.

On the computer in question: Right click an empty area of the desktop.

A menu should appear with the choice "Show more options" - click that.

Another menu should appear with the choice NVIDIA Control Panel. Select that. Or if some other GPU manufacturer - check that Control Panel.

Take a look at the settings and verify if all settings are configured as they should be.

and for the last one, I will be trying to check it out tomorrow after church is done, even if I'm currently using the said PC I'm pretty sure I will need to be where the videotron is at to try and experiment with this solution

so far I'm just trying to solve this as quickly as possible since I'm hearing that they're planning on spending even more money to try and replace something inside of the PC and it may or may not even be the component that is having troubles

the second biggest problem is that even if we try to ask for a warranty to see if it really is just a bad batch, when the person will most likely ask what's wrong with it, we can only try to explain that this problem will only happen when on a specific thing and they will probably deny that warranty claim😅

tomorrow I will try and check things out with my own computer, might as well try since my PC's CPU is also the same, but the motherboard, RAM, SSD, and GPU is different, so I will try to see if it could be the MB that's being weird, which is what the others in church is having suspicions on

UPDATE: just short circuited my PC from moving the parts around, gonna have a specialist look into it before continuing this thread, the videotron is gonna be continued by another person's PC which somehow can run for the time being.

 

[Ralston18]

Make, model, and size of the Videotron's?

Will either one or both display if connected directly to the PC in question.

Connection path being PC <----HDMI/DP----> Videotron (Completely bypassing the Novastar video processor.)

= = = =

When you "short-circuited" the PC was the power off and the PSU unplugged?

Being a different PC than the church PC - correct?

The reason I am asking is if that is correct and you are moving parts between the two PCs then that could be some other problem.

Either way what PC parts were you moving around and what was the reason for moving the parts?

We need to be careful here that we do not mix up the computers and problems.

 

[TrippyFries]

Make, model, and size of the Videotron's?

Will either one or both display if connected directly to the PC in question.

Connection path being PC <----HDMI/DP----> Videotron (Completely bypassing the Novastar video processor.)

ok so, the pc is somehow fine and is completely working now, and I'm currently in the church whilst typing this, after asking the model of the videotron panel is called a P1.8 led module

and I counted it as 19 modules wide and 12 modules tall, so a 12x19. in terms of height and widthand after checking inside of the Novastar box, the resolution goes into 3344x1032 60hz, which is really weird and wedged when using the screen at 1980x1080

and both of them will be connected to the PC, the one display will be connected to the main monitor which will be a control panel inside of the multimedia room controlling what's being displayed and what's coming next whilst the 2nd monitor aka the one on the videotron will be the one that's displaying it the actual video.

and for the connection path for the main monitor it would be: PC <--- DP ---> Monitor
and the one that's the other monitor it would be: PC > HDMI > Novastar VX600 > Videotron


after trying out the PC to connect to the Novastar VX600 the display to the HDMI to the VX600 was not being read, and only had the message of "Sync Failed" with the HDMI 1 blinking, which is connected to the PC, whilst the HDMI 2 which is not blinking is connected to a camera,

and that's about it, but when plugged into other systems around here the sync issue is gone, and when looking at the specs of the other PCs it seems that all of them have an intel CPU with a Nvidia GPU, so all that I'm currently wondering about is if this system just hates AMD CPUs. and as of writing this the videotron cannot be turned on as there are people around the area, but after this I'm going to make an update post once the videotron can be turned on and I will post more pictures

 

[TrippyFries]

UPDATE: ok so weird thing happened, after the activity was done and I am able to turn on the videotron for testing, the standard thing started to happen again, but after talking with the others, they noticed that the HDMI that connects to the Novastar was not giving any signal and so they unplug it and plug it back in, and now in the computer we have a signal, but of course it was not functioning yet, since the sync problem is still happening.

after this I decided to boot the PC into my original PC SSD since its still connected and what do you know, it somehow connects and everything is working correctly, and after testing we have concluded that it was working perfectly like every other PCs in the room except for the troublesome one, we even tried using programs for the broadcasting and even that is working correctly.


so currently we are thinking that the main problem here is the SSD that the troublesome PC has, while we are still discussing it, I'm planning on trying to get a used ssd and trying to attach that into the troublesome PC and see what happens, as of now we at least know that all the PC components other than the SSD should be safe. I will post more updates on this and hopefully it would be the last one, so as of now the main problem could be a faulty SSD

 

[Ralston18]

Before doing anything else take a closer look at the troublesome PC.

Look in Reliability History/Monitor and Event Viewer for any error codes, warnings, or even informational events being captured just before or at the time of the signal problems.

Reliability History/Monitor is End-User friendly and provides a graphical format that can reveal patterns. Some error(s) or other errors then no signal.....

Event Viewer can also be used but requires more time and effort to navigate and understand.

I would not necessarily suspect the SSD directly - maybe some buggy or corrupted file but if the problem is intermittent then more likely a connection problem or some configuration problem. Possibly a combination - two or more things need to be happening or occur causing the signal to be lost.

Be sure that all data is backed up at least 2 x to locations away from the troublesome PC and its' drives.

Verify that the backups are recoverable and readable.

Overall, take your time, be methodical, change only one thing at a time. Allow time between changes.

 

[TrippyFries]

Before doing anything else take a closer look at the troublesome PC.

Look in Reliability History/Monitor and Event Viewer for any error codes, warnings, or even informational events being captured just before or at the time of the signal problems.

Reliability History/Monitor is End-User friendly and provides a graphical format that can reveal patterns. Some error(s) or other errors then no signal.....

Event Viewer can also be used but requires more time and effort to navigate and understand.

For the reliability history/monitor and event viewer, I'll take a look into it, although I'd probably need to look at a tutorial since I've never used it before

I would not necessarily suspect the SSD directly - maybe some buggy or corrupted file but if the problem is intermittent then more likely a connection problem or some configuration problem. Possibly a combination - two or more things need to be happening or occur causing the signal to be lost.

I suspected that the SSD is the problem since it persists even after doing a format from windows 11 to 10.

Verify that the backups are recoverable and readable.

as for the data, with the computer still being relatively new there is not really anything of importance in this PC that warrants a back up, maybe just some files here and there (mostly videos) that can be saved in a thumb drive.

Overall, take your time, be methodical, change only one thing at a time. Allow time between changes.

I will, especially since the suspected problem is more specific, and that I have to wait until I find / buy an SSD to test it on, anyways, I wanna say thank you for helping me out this far

 

[Ralston18]

Not problem.

Reliabiiity History/Monitor is easy to use.

Event Viewer - to help:

How To - How to use Windows 10 Event Viewer | Tom's Hardware Forum (tomshardware.com)