I smelled something like burning wires coming from my PC, so I shut it off. I turned it back on a short time later, and everything became stretched out width wise. My icons are half off the screen, and when I look at web pages, the left and right part is cut off and everything is distorted because of the stretching.
Does anyone know what may have happened and how I might go about fixing it? I definitely didn’t change any settings, it just happened by itself. I’m using XP, btw. I tried using system restore, but that didn’t do the trick. Thanks.
Sounds like something might have happened to your video card. Do you have a separate video card (IE: not built into the motherboard)? If so, the cooling fan may have gotten gunked up and quit spinning, which would cause the chip on the video card to overheat, damaging it. As far as fixing it… if I’m correct as to what happened, you may need to get a new video card.
Hmm. actually, I just assumed the smell was coming from the PC. After reading gotpasswords’ post, I put my sniffer to the monitor. It seems that that’s where the smell came from.
Isn’t there some way to just adjust the screen?
I plan on buying a new PC a few months after Vista comes out and I really don’t want to have to buy a seperate monitor now If I don’t have to.
Near the power button on the monitor, are there some other buttons? One should labelled “Menu” , “+” and “-”. Press the menu button, and if the screen adjust menu comes up, you should be able to find icons to adjust the screen size, one for vertical and one for horizontal. Use the “+” and “-” keys to move the highlighted icon, then select the icon with the “Menu” button, and adjust the value with the “+” and “-” keys.
Close or minimize all applications so that you can see your desktop. Point to a blank place on the desktop that has no icons and right-click. You should see a drop-down menu, the last item on which should be Properties. Left-click Properties. You should then get a pop-up dialog box with a row of tabs across the top, the last one being Settings. Left-click the Settings tab. About midway down the dialog box on the left side, you should see a Screen Resolution slider bar that allows you to change the resolution (dimensions) of your monitor’s display by left-clicking on the slider, holding the left mouse button down, and moving the slider either right or left. At this point, however, if you have indeed experienced a critical failure of your video card or graphics accelerator, that entire field may be “greyed-out” or not adjustable. Give it a try and let me know what happens.
PS: It might be a good idea to print this out first before trying it.
Thanks guys. I was able to fix it by adjusting the monitor as suggested by Fear Itself, but it was hard to tell if I was still distorted or not. I tried Dishfunctional’s method by increasing screen resolution one click to the right, and that seems to have worked. My icons and text are smaller, but I increased the text size a little in Firefox, and things look similar enough to what they used to, so I’m happy. Thanks again, guys!
Thanks again, guys!