Author Topic: Computer monitor problems - any suggestions?  (Read 2534 times)

RetiredAt63

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Computer monitor problems - any suggestions?
« on: July 06, 2014, 04:49:09 AM »
My monitor looked a bit off last night.  This morning it is very strange, it looks like a smeary photocopy (a lot of horizontal grey smeary lines around the words, really hard to read).  Is there some setting that I can tweak, or is the monitor just getting old?  It is over 4 years old and has been on almost every day.

TIA

zolotiyeruki

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Re: Computer monitor problems - any suggestions?
« Reply #1 on: July 06, 2014, 02:07:13 PM »
Are the smears horizontal only?  If so, try reseating the cable between the monitor and the computer. Another alternative, if your monitor and computer both support DVI or HDMI or some other digital display cable, is to switch to a digital signal.  With an analog cable, your computer has to translate the digital information into analog, and then the monitor has to re-translate that analog back into digital before displaying.  With a digital cable, you avoid all those conversions.

RetiredAt63

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Re: Computer monitor problems - any suggestions?
« Reply #2 on: July 06, 2014, 03:19:35 PM »
Yes, horizontal only.  I will try the reseating, thanks.  I am on another monitor now so I will swap when I turn the computer off.

zolotiyeruki

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Re: Computer monitor problems - any suggestions?
« Reply #3 on: July 07, 2014, 09:14:09 AM »
You don't have to shut down the computer to swap out monitors--just go ahead and swap them, and Windows should auto-detect and set up your other monitor with no issues.

BlueMR2

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Re: Computer monitor problems - any suggestions?
« Reply #4 on: July 10, 2014, 10:17:59 AM »
You don't have to shut down the computer to swap out monitors--just go ahead and swap them, and Windows should auto-detect and set up your other monitor with no issues.

I would recommend a little caution giving that advice since (at least VGA) is not actually a hot-swap connector.  You're fine as long as the shell makes contact first (which should *almost* always be the case).  However, in my many years in IT I did see one (just one!) monitor that blew out from being hot-swapped.  So, likely to be just fine, but at least a small warning is in order.

No clue if DVI is hotswap (won't be a problem much longer anyways, DVI monitors are just about extinct now, seems like everything is HDMI and VGA now).  HDMI appears to be hot-swap and I'd expect it to be since it's an actual consumer technology, but I don't know for sure.

gimp

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Re: Computer monitor problems - any suggestions?
« Reply #5 on: July 10, 2014, 07:43:09 PM »
How'd the monitor situation go? It could just as easily be the graphics card (likely chipset or on-die graphics) that fucked up.

HDMI is certainly hot-swappable. So is DVI.

shadowmoss

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Re: Computer monitor problems - any suggestions?
« Reply #6 on: July 11, 2014, 06:27:07 AM »
If another monitor works plugged into the same vga connector on the computer, it's the monitor not the card.  If reseating didn't work, play with the monitor, or plug it into a different computer and see where the problem stays, with the monitor or with the computer.