I have a Dell Dimension 4600. My monitor is an ATI Radion 9800. The screen is flickering with a sort of jittery static. The edges of the screen seem to irregularly pulse, contracting inward.
I have Norton antivirus and I occasionally run AdAware.
Restarting the computer sometimes helps it, so that’s why I’m wondering if it’s something wrong with the software.
Please phrase your answers as simply as possible, as I know very little about computers.
It doesn’t sound like a virus. Did you check to make sure the monitor cable wasn’t loose? Do you have any cell phones, electric pencil sharpeners, etc. nearby that could be causing interference?
Check a see if you have a degauss setting on your monitor buttons themselves. Sometimes it is on a dedicated button and sometimes it is in the monitor setup menu. It only takes a second and it sounds like it might fix it.
Your monitor or your video card is a Radeon 9800? The monitor is the thing you look at; the video card is the thing inside the computer, that the cable from the monitor plugs into.
This sounds like hardware failure in the monitor itself. Is your monitor a CRT (a big, heavy, bulky tube) rather than a flat panel of some sort? How old is it?
When CRTs die, they do so in interesting ways. Typically there are a set of electronic circuits that sweep a bright spot across the screen of the CRT. One circuit moves the spot horizontally; another moves it vertically. Still another deals with the colour.
When either of these two spot-moving circuits degrades, the spot no longer moves in a perfectly-regular way. Signals from other areas can get in, causing visual interference. Some component in the horizontal circuit can weaken, meaning that the spot no longer travels across the whole width of the tube. Something in the vertical can weaken, meaning that the spot no longer travels across the whole height of the tube. The two signals can lose synchronisation, resulting in a bleared mess.
If components are weakening, and your monitor is old, the best thing to do is to replace it.
What’s “deguass” and where would I find it? I hit my menu button on the monitor itself and didn’t get that as one of the options. I hit “reset to factory settings” and it didn’t help.
I’ve tried going into the Control Panel (Windows XP) but I couldn’t find it.
I think ATI Radeon 9800 refers to the video card, not the monitor. Is the monitor an LCD flat panel, or a bulky CRT? It was a jittery CRT monitor that prompted me to upgrade to an LCD flat panel two years ago, and I never found out exactly which component failed inside the tube. I always assumed it was a loose electron gun, and I took the broken CRT to a computer recycling center without getting a full diagnosis to confirm my suspicion.
It’s my video card. I’m grossly embarassed to admit that I thought it was the name of my monitor when I clicked on “display” under the Control Panel.
Big and bulky. I think the whole system is about four years old. (I bought it when Star Wars Galexies came out, if that’s any help. :smack: )
biometricks, no, I don’t think I have anything that’s causing interference.
You went to the right place (it isn’t in control panel). If you couldn’t find it then the monitor will probably degauss when you press the monitor button on and off… it’ll do a weird flicker thing if the monitor hasn’t been degaussed in a while.
EDIT: I think you have to turn it on/off quickly… for it to degauss that way… forgot to mention it.
There is also a slight chance that setting the dispaly rate low my help, if the monitor can not handle the current refresh rate.
A video card can also cause problems if it is failing.
The monitor sounds like the best culpert. Borrow a monitor and try it on your system.
You might get this kind of trouble if you have something near the monitor that generates magnetic fields. An uninterruptable power supply or a big heavy power conditioner might do this. Or perhaps a motor, a neon sign, a transformer, something like that. Is the monitor against a wall that could have something like this on the other side?
Could interference be coming from somewhere outside my home? I can’t think of any devices inside which could be causing it.
The intereference angle might have potential. The screen doesn’t do the flickering thing all the time. Right now, as I type this, it’s as clear as a bell.
I suspect this may be what’s wrong with my monitor. It had/has similar symptoms to what the OP describes. I discovered I could “fix” it by sliding something under the rear half of the monitor stand so that it tilts forward a little more than usual. (I may eventually have to replace it, but I’m getting a little more life out of it this way, and with luck it’ll last until I have to replace my computer too.)