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monitor screen messing up?
About 4-5 times a week my monitor screen will mess up. It is hard to describe what comes up on the screen other than it is completely distorted. It is almost like a diagonal plaid pattern, and my computer locks up. I am not sure if it is a problem with the monitor or the computer. The monitor is an HP flat screen, if that makes a difference, approx 2 yrs old. The computer is less than a yr old. When it does this I have to hold the power button in to get it to shut down then after sitting for a couple of mins everything is fine until the next time.
It is very frustrating when this happens while I am doing something for school because all of my work is lost.
Any advice would be appreciated.
It does this at random times but does seem to happen more often if the computer has been on for several hours.
It is a desktop. I have run virus scan and it shows clean. I was thinking maybe my CPU was overheating. The fan runs, so that is not the problem. I have checked the vents to make sure they are not stopped up.
3 Answers
- 10 years agoFavorite Answer
Well if your work is lost I doubt it's the screen, usually display problems are due to the graphics card, but it wouldn't cause you to lose work and have to restart, it would just disable itself and run the onboard graphics.
So I'm assuming you don't have a graphics cihp and have onboard graphics on your motherboard, if your motherboard is overheating this could perhaps be a cause, depends on where you use it I guess, if you're out in the sun with it perhaps - I don't really know.
It's unlikely to be a software problem, if you cannot see a pattern to exactly when it occurs. Kinda hard to tell though, and not an easy fix.
Edit: You say that it happens if the laptop has been on for a while, so perhaps it is that the laptop is overheating. I guess dust and things can make it run hotter over time, perhaps try getting a laptop cooler like this: http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/5442978/Cooler-Maste...
Realistically you shouldn't have to do this, especially if you're just using it for school work. Since it's new it probably isn't a component wearing out, and since it's recent it probably wasn't faulty when you bought it. You should run virus scans to make sure it's definitely not the software, and definitely download the latest drivers for everything - this is very important.
Again, not a simple fix - hard to diagnose.
- 7 years ago
I too am having this issue but I have 2 monitors and it only happens on one of them, If I unplug the problem monitor the distortion moves on to the other monitor and moves back when I plug it back in. I'm running win8 enterprise, Core I7 870s, AMD 7850OC, 16GB ram, Intel DP55KG mobo. Also its not a overheating issue, I can see what my temps are on my taskar and my PC would auto shutdown if temps got dangerous.
I have updated drivers a bunch of times, reinstalled windows 7 and 8 multiple times so far, changed video card, changed cables/monitors, the whole nine yards to no avail.
It happens most often with flash video related things, its not a AMD driver issue as I have seen it with NVidia as well. So I'm think its some sort conflict between flash and windows. It is a windows problem as I use Ubuntu as well on the same machine and have never seen it. Also I have never seen it with XP.
- 10 years ago
Sounds like either a driver issue or a Graphics card issue.
Is there anything specific that causes this? Like, you open Windows media player and it crashes, or is it completely random? Is there a specific time after booting it does this?
