War Story: The reason for troubleshooting step-by-step

OK then, here comes a recent war story/lesson learned. Mid-week last week my right-hand Dell 2717D monitor started flickering on me. I've got it up on my desk, connected to my 1070 GTX graphics card with a miniDP to DP cable from monitor to GPU. I have occasionally kicked this cable because it hangs down behind my desk, then wraps around underneath to get to the GPU from the monitor.

Thus, when things started going sideways, my first thought was "bad cable." I had a 6 ft spare (about 6 inches shorter than the original Dell cable that came with the monitor, 2m = 6.56ft =~= 6'6"). Swapped the cable out, and presto! Problem has not recurred since. The only PITA is that accessing the monitor to swap the cables is tricky and time-consuming. But, because the replacement is just a tad shorter than the original, it is now nearly impossible for me to kick or bump that cable any more. I figure that one time when I did that recently, I probably stressed the connector into the motherboard and caused it to start shorting. This counts as a "fortunate fix" to me because it not only solves the problem, it makes it less likely to recur.

In general when troubleshooting devices, if there's a cable between the device and the computer, that's ALWAYS the first thing to check. In my case, fortunately, it was also the LAST thing I needed to check, too.

End of story.
--Ed--

Experts are people who have lived long enough to make nearly all possible mistakes.

I always coil up long cables out of the way using cable ties