Graphics card / monitor issue?

raiyanb · November 24th, 2004, 09:06 AM

Hey everyone

REcently and all of a sudden my monitor display on my PC has been acting funny. There are lines all over the screen which usually start out yellow bludges on the icons but then turn to hundreds of lines running aross the screen, making it ahrd to see. Sometime the line go green or red or blue. Then sometimes after a while they disappear but tehn maybe cme back again after 10mins. Im using windows XP at 1152x864 and 16bit color. BEfore it only happened once i had entered windows.

At first i thought it coud be either the monitor, graphics card, display driver or a virus. But i tried to reformat my PC and reinstall windows XP. It looked as if the problem was gonee but as soon as i had finised installin service pack 2 (which i have installed before with no problems) once the PC restarted it went funny again. THis time however it also went funny on the bios checking bit as well where they RAM is counted. DOes this means that its not a virus or display driver problem?

Ive tried different displaydrivers but noting helps it. I thought it could be my graphics card cos i recently upgraded to a radeon 9800pro. but ive had this for 3 month now and this problem only happened since a few days ago. Te only other thing ive installed is a DVDRW which i installed a month ago but the computer again sill worked perfectly after that.

Im using my monitor against my dads laptop and so far theres been no problem (at 800x600) but the main thing is that even on my computer sometimes it came and sometimes it didnt. Ive opened my case up and the graphics card is properly inserted into the mobo.

Any ideas as to wat it mite be please???

Thanks

Raiyan

raiyanb · November 24th, 2004, 09:34 AM

ive tried pressign the degauss button nothing changes it. As far as i know i havent moved any electrical item near the monitor. Right now im using the same monitor with my dads lapop for a bout 5 hours now and ive had no problems so far. BUt cos the thing happens randomly as far as i kno im still not sure...

Bovon · November 24th, 2004, 10:06 AM

Could it possibly be some kind of spyware?. I have not heard of spyware affecting video yet, but if it can be done...we can be sure someone will write the software to do it.

If possible, try a different video card... I have seen some very weird displays when the video cards RAM went flaky.

eagle1 · November 24th, 2004, 10:39 AM

First the easy menthod!
Check out the monitor cable! Check if it is fully inserted on the monitor and
if it is correctly inserted in the video card.
Also, check the monitor cable for bent pins!!!
Update your video card drivers.

If it is not a faulty monitor cable, it's probably the video card (I have seen this a lot of times with cheap or overclocked videocards).

If you can, test with another monitor to see if the same thing keeps happening!

paul9 · November 24th, 2004, 11:16 AM

i believe it still sounds like a monitor problem, steve. perhaps the frame flyback lines are not being blanked. best thing to do is try a different monitor for a few days, if you can, raiyan.

eagle1 · November 24th, 2004, 11:23 AM

Yep. Try another monitor as suggested or check the cables of your current one and see if the image (colors and stuff) starts to change.
But as I mentioned, I've seen a lot of videocards failing and those are kind of the symptoms!

raiyanb · November 24th, 2004, 07:58 PM

Hey

well i tried the monitor on my dads pc as i said and there were no problems. I wuda thought it could be the graphics card but i right now just reinstalled everything again an although in the begining the funny lines were all over the BIOS checkin screen and desktop of windows, since ive restarted theyve gone and its perfect again. HOWEVER (again) sometimes the monitor randomly switches off - i mean that although the monitor is still on and the green led is on there is no image on the screen.

BEcause of this i was thinking that it cant be the graphics card because its displayed windows XP for a while without no problems. I was thinking that maybe the PSU could have caused the distortion as maybe its not gettin enough power to the card. Ive got a 300W PSU and quite alot of peripheral (2x HDD, DVD, DVDRW, radeon 9800 pro, modem, audigy2 etc.) Could this be it?

thanks for any replies

Bovon · November 24th, 2004, 10:53 PM

Quote:

sometimes the monitor randomly switches off - i mean that although the monitor is still on and the green led is on there is no image on the screen.

That wouldn't be a Dell monitor...would it?..

Quote:

I was thinking that maybe the PSU could have caused the distortion as maybe its not gettin enough power to the card. Ive got a 300W PSU and quite alot of peripheral (2x HDD, DVD, DVDRW, radeon 9800 pro, modem, audigy2 etc.) Could this be it?

raiyanb · November 25th, 2004, 06:08 AM

thanks for all your replies

Im pretty sure its the PSU thats causing the problem and i was planning on buying a new one anyway because mine makes funny noises also. I used the PC to watch a movie yesterday and it was perfect with no problems. I dunno how long thatll last for though....

raiyanb · December 1st, 2004, 08:48 PM

Hey just to let you all know, i replaced my 9800 pro with my old geforce fx 5200 and its working fine. Does this single out the graphics card? Im still 80% sure that it could be a PSU unit problem though as ive had problems with the PSU before. Ive posted before about my voltage rails being a big problem (i only had 4V for the 5V rail..)

Thanks for any replies