problem with monitor display - need help!

6197 Views 6 Replies 4 Participants Last post by dai, Jan 22, 2007

pedrodave

Discussion Starter · Jan 21, 2007

Hi - my first post on the forums and i'm not very technical so firstly my apologies if i've put this in the wrong section (not too sure what the actual problem is!).

I'm having major problems with how with the display on my screen (i've included a print screen shot of how it looks), basically it goes all garbled everytime i switch on.

I've gone through the basic help guides on the PC and tried uninstalling and reinstalling the display adapters but that didnt work (i've also tried a different monitor so i know its not a problem with the monitor itself). Basically I need to know what the problem is and how I can fix it (do I need a new graphics card?)

Here is the image of how the screen goes (in case it is of any relevance my OS is WinXP) Thanks in advance for any help you can give:

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manic

· #2 · Jan 21, 2007

I would try a different video card.

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pedrodave

Discussion Starter · #3 · Jan 21, 2007

manic said:
I would try a different video card.

Thanks for that, I had a feeling this might be the case. OK, can you recommend a decent graphics card? At the moment it looks like we've got this:

"128 DDR ATI Radeon 9800 Pro"

Not too sure if that is the info you need, I'm not very knowledgeable on these things!

I wouldn't be looking to spend too much on this, certainly no more than £100. We do play some games on the machine like Football Manager and The Sims but not the 3D action stuff so we wouldn't need a top of the range card.

Any ideas?

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manic

· #4 · Jan 21, 2007

I use nvidia based cards myself, but most any card with 128mgs of ram
will do ok for you. I think there is a sticky thread in this forum about
graphics cards, should give you some guidelines and prices to go by.

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Done_Fishin

· #5 · Jan 21, 2007

B4 you change the video vard I would suggest that you check your cables (possibly bent pin) or even go into safe mode and downgrade your graphics display to a different rate. It looks like the mnitor can't handle the size you're trying to give it.
Click on the background, select properties then settings when the menu and window come up. Adjust your display size to something like 800*600 with 256 colors / 24 bit deopending upon what you see available. You could also click on the advanced button and double check that teh refresh rate isnt too high, put it at 60Hz if you live in an area where the Electric supply is at 50Hz or 50/70 Hz if you live where the supply is run at 60Hz. This just stops any annoyance like unneeded flickering due to the mains and the Monitor frequemncies are the same (usually in the vicinity of fluorescent lamps).
Restart your PC normally and see if you have a stable picture now.
Just how old is your Monitor/Graphics card anyway, and is this something that happened only recently after some "tweaking" or did it happen all by itself?

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pedrodave

Discussion Starter · #6 · Jan 22, 2007

Done_Fishin said:
Just how old is your Monitor/Graphics card anyway, and is this something that happened only recently after some "tweaking" or did it happen all by itself?

No "tweaking" it just started happening 1 day, it had been totally fine until then; the PC, monitor and card are all just over 3 years old.

I've also tried downgrading the display but no joy

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dai

· #7 · Jan 22, 2007

see if you can borrow another card to try in it

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