Annoyance upon annoyance, computer edition

Our main desktop computer won't boot. I mean, we still have this laptop I'm typing on, and our phones, and all. But still.

So I want to boot into safe mode. Except ... when you log onto the computer, none of the post messages or bios announcements or anything show -- it always remains black until the login screen. This has always been true since we got it; I just never actually THOUGHT about it until today, when it means that I can't actually do anything.

Lis looks it up and finds out that our motherboard has a known problem with failing to handshake with high-resolution monitors, which isn't a problem, since once the video card takes over, who cares? Except for in this situation.

So I go into the basement to find one of the obsolete CRT monitors which we've tended to dump down there and forget about. Except we finally decided to be responsible adults and not hang onto obsolete electronics that nobody is ever going to want and are just taking up space. So we recycled, like, half a dozen of them on a day that Lis's work was doing a "free bring in your old monitors and stuff" day.

I can't solve the problem because we actually decided to be responsible adults.