PC won't boot :(

Timothy Kim60 said:It shouldn't have fried anything. I mean, was the monitor working fine before you started messing around with that junk?

Either the monitor just gave up on life, or it’s that converter.

Well, the monitor worked both with and without it. It even worked a little while ago over at my buddy's place, but we hooked it up directly via VGA. No other cable would work, but his setup fixed it instantly. We haven't tried an HDMI connection yet, so I guess it's possible the adapter just died.

wanderingbison9 said:Are you getting any BIOS screen during bootup?

No, there's absolutely no signal.

I am uncertain if you have attempted this yet. Press Win+P.

I haven't posted anything yet because I hadn't actually verified if this HDMI-VGA adapter was functional. I just stopped by my buddy's place and it worked there, then I get home—and it works here too. 😕 Honestly, I'm completely baffled. Let me try to recap what happened.
I tried booting up my PC, but nothing happened because a thunderstorm had tripped all my breakers. Once I flipped the power back on and hit the front power button—I rarely touch the one on the back—the PC seemed to turn on, but there was no signal. The monitor just kept blinking like the computer was off. I tried restarting via the case button a few times, but nothing changed. I tried shutting it down with the front button, and I think it happened twice where it would immediately turn itself back on right after I shut it down. Then I tried the back switch; whenever I toggled it from 0 to I, it would trigger a boot, even though it’s supposed to wait for the front button press. Eventually, I hooked the graphics card up to my TV using an HDMI-HDMI cable and everything appeared—though I got that "your PC did not start correctly" error, likely from the hard shutdown.
That ruled out the graphics card for me. I even fired up Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered, and it ran fine. I figured maybe the issue was the monitor, so I took it over to my friend's house. We tried connecting it via VGA to his motherboard, but no luck. He grabbed another cable and that worked, but when we used mine, it failed again. We quickly concluded it was probably the VGA cable rather than the monitor or the HDMI-VGA adapter. When I got home, I reassembled everything—HDMI side of the adapter into the GPU, VGA side into the cable, and the other end into the monitor—and ended up right back where I started: the monitor just blinks like the PC is off. At that point, I assumed the adapter must have died since we hadn't tested it independently. In the meantime, I picked up a different monitor with a DVI port, plugged it directly into the GPU, and everything worked perfectly. Since then, I haven't been able to get back to my friend's to test the old monitor with the adapter again. Today, I went back over, hooked it up to a laptop, and it worked! We were both pretty stunned; we couldn't figure out why the exact same setup wouldn't work on my PC. Now I'm back home, I have the DVI monitor plugged in, and I've connected the adapter setup too—and they both work. I'm just sitting here totally bewildered. 😳 I'll stick with the DVI one for now, but the adapter setup is still going strong. I shut the PC down, turn it back on, and it just works... I really don't know... it's pure madness.

So, this happened to me today while I was browsing https://gradnjakuce.com/mravi-u-kuci-evo-rjesenja/ — my monitor just went black, almost like the computer had shut down entirely. I’m sitting there thinking, *what now?* I tried Alt+Tab, nothing. I hit Ctrl+Esc, and the macOS start menu pops up, but as soon as I click anything other than closing the specific tab where that page was open, the screen goes dark again. I repeat the process, close the tab, and suddenly the image comes back. I mean, what the hell is that even supposed to be!!??