booting before the monitor is turned on - strange result

[Nish]

Setup: My PC is connected to my HDTV via DVI to HDMI on the set. Because it is connected that way it does not react like a monitor does power-wise (i.e., I have to shut it off when I shut down PC and turn it on when I turn on PC).  I know this from my TV's manual that I would have to be connected via d-sub to have it behave like a monitor - that is fine, I keep the digital because the picture seems better to me.

Today I turned on PC and got distracted and did not turn on the TV so PC was on for awhile before I got back to it.  I turned on the monitor and shook the mouse to wake it up as screen saver was on (spacetux well, instead of getting my desktop I got a black screen, BUT there was my gkrellm monitor.  No wallpaper, no taskbar, nothing but gkrellm.  Ctrl-alt-del brought up the usual KDE shutdown menu and on reboot all was OK.

Anybody seen anything like that?  X was certainly going, KDE was actually going and there was gkrellm on top but - hmmm, I don't know about the lack of wallpaper, desktop and taskbar.

[rubentje1991]

I'd have tried <Ctrl><Alt><Backspace> (restarting X-server), instead of rebooting the whole pc...
No experiences with such situations if that's what you want to know... 

[Nish]

I will try that next time, it was so odd because I am sure X was running (how else could I have gkrellm there) I didn't think to just restart X.  I know in the old days if a monitor was not hooked up and powered on it caused problems if you turned the PC on but I haven't seen such in a long time. I often turn the tv/monitor on after the PC has booted but never this long after.  Would be interesting to see what windows would do but can't happen, would have to bring up grub to choose windows and the monitor would be on.

Thanks