Visual problem with no apparent source or reason

Question

I have a very weird visuals problem that will take some explaining, so please bear with me:   I have five inch-wide vertical stripes running down my monitor and each of these stripes is made up of lots of little black and white lines (although these can flicker and become mutli-coloured when opening an application). Th eproblem also appears as lots of multicoloured flickering squares on video playback.   1. I have pressed the button on the monitor to bring its own menu up and this menu is not affected by these lines, which seem to go 'behind' it. Switching the monitor to Analogue Input Self test shows no problem there and turning the monitor on brings up the Dell Ultra Sharp (?) logo, again without the problem.   2. Pressing Print Screen does not capture these stripes, which means I can't post any pictures of my problem and seems to show that these stripes are not part of the desktop graphics. Also, no part of Windows XP is working incorrectly, as all programs are opening and performing exactly as they should.   3. Originally, the problem was more serious, as there were also hundreds of horizontal lines across the screen as well as the five main columns of lines, but turning down Hardware Acceleration in the Troubleshooting tab of Advanced Display Properties two notches removed the horizontal lines, leaving just the five vertical columns of black and white stripes. Turning down the Hardware Acceleration further made no difference.   4. I tried running a couple of games, but they were unplayable as the 3D graphics were completely garbled - thanks to no need for 3D graphics, 2D games still work, although they still have the lines running down the screen 'on top' of their own graphics.   5. Thinking my 3D card (128MB DDR ATI Radeon 9800 Pro) was at fault, I tried updating my drivers from the ATI website, but this actually made the problem worse and despite hearing Windows load as normal, my display remained blank apart from a couple of multicoloured horizontal lines on the left hand side of the screen. I uninstalled these drivers in Safe Mode and let Windows detect the 3D card again when it rebooted, but this just led to the situation described above - 5 vertical columns made up of black and white lines and lots of horizontal lines until the Hardware Acceleration was turned down.   6. Might seem obvious that the 3D card is at fault, however, the problem occurs right from turning the power on (although the problem is shown as columns of multicolured blocks until XP actually gets to Desktop), when I am pretty sure the 3D card has no effect, plus it also occurs both in Safe Mode and with the 3D card disabled.   7. I have checked all of my leads and connections, they are fine - my PC is not making any unusual sounds or anything; I have searched for viruses, spyware and other malignant software and have found nothing wrong there either.   I cannot think of anything else I can do to even find out where the problem lies, so I am just hoping that some of the more knowledgable users on here can help me.

Daniel Butler · Answer

My PC is a Dimension 4600 running Windows XP with Service Pack 2

Service tag: BTQC01J

Monitor: Dell 1703FP

I don't think it is the monitor at fault as these lines do not appear on the Analog Input Self Test, only Digital Input and even then, when I press the button on the monitor to bring up the monitor menu (with Brightness, Color Settings etc) the lines do not affect the menu either, but disappear 'behind' it instead.

If the monitor was at fault, wouldn't these lines appear no matter what input is being used or what was being displayed on screen?

Thanks for the fast response though!

bob350 · Answer

Howdy

Can you get another montor to use ?
If another one works, you can pretty much rule out your video card & connections
This sounds a lot like my old montor looked like , when it went bad.
The self check on that one was also coming up fine.

However that was a CRT, that I replaced with a FP
Sorry I can't be much more help than that.

Bob

Daniel Butler · Answer

And I should add that my PC was idle, with World of Warcraft in Windowed Mode minimised and one window of Internet Explorer open when this problem first appeared.

Also, whenever I turn on the PC, the lines do not appear at first and everything looks fine, but as soon as I try and open an mpeg, QT video or 3D game, the bars appear and everything is messed up again.

To me, this no problem occurring until the PC has been on for a while or tries to do something more powerful than displaying static 2D images suggests that there is something wrong inside the PC - but I cannot be sure as I am no expert.

speedstep · Answer

Service Tag/Serial Number?
Model Number of Dell?
OS Version? XP PRO, XP Home, WIN2000, SERVICE PACK 1 2 3 4?

Verticle lines sounds like Failed GPU fan and or LCD screen with broken internal electronics or laptop with cracked screen and or all of the above.

bob350 · Answer

Well, with the added info, I would go with SpeedStep & say you have an overheating or just plain bad video card.Bob Message Edited by bob350 on 11-27-2005 04:56 PM

Daniel Butler · Answer

The thing is, the problem still occurs with the 3D card disabled and occurs right from the power being switched on, not just on the desktop when XP has loaded.

People on here are obviously more knowledgable than me about this sort of thing, but is it possible for the 3D card to still cause this problem when it isn't being used?

Apologies for being such an amatuer here.

Locked Topics – Desktops General

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