Help me figure out what part needs replaced

September 11, 2007 7:06 AM

Is it my cheap monitor, or my cheap video card? Or both?

Let me explain: my Envision 19 in. monitor has begun to resize the screen at seemingly random times. It makes a little click and the screen shrinks by 10-15%. Five, ten, fifty minutes later it will resize to normal.

I have also began noticing curious instances where the bar at the top of my windows (where the hide, resize, and exit buttons are) disappears when I have too many windows open.

Because I'm also running an ageing Nvidia 5200 video card, I thought perhaps it might be the card. I updated the drivers and that seemed to help (or maybe it was my imagination) for three weeks or so, but now the problems have begun to resurface.

I need to attempt a fix this week. Which should I start with?

posted by mrmojoflying to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Just a guess really, But I'd say it's the monitor. Try replacing with a real cheapo CRT as a test. You might be able to borrow one or get one for 10 bucks or so. You'll just have to run the test long enough to assure yourself that the test monitor is not showing the problem.
posted by DarkForest at 7:31 AM on September 11, 2007

Seconding DarkForest, if the screen resizes physically while the resolution remains the same, it's probably a monitor issue. Particularly if it's an aging CRT, which can die in all sorts of fascinating ways. Testing the monitor first will be the easiest way of narrowing down the problem.

Window bars disappearing-- that I don't know. Could be a side effect of screen resizing, could possibly be the video card, could even be something else.
posted by lou at 8:45 AM on September 11, 2007

Window bars disappearing

That's probably still a resizing or image shifting issue, with that part of the image going off the screen.
posted by DarkForest at 8:47 AM on September 11, 2007

This is a problem with the aging monitor. It's caused by a faulty part or connection heating up. When it heats enough to stop working properly, or to break a connection, that's when the monitor clicks and your image suddenly shrinks.

At this point current is has now stopped flowing through the part, and it begins to cool. When it cools down enough to start working again, the picture snaps back to normal.
posted by kimdog at 9:11 AM on September 11, 2007

Sounds like a bad capacitor that builds up to a point where it discharges itself (same thing that can make a clicking or whistling noise, if it discharges much faster).

Heats up, shorts, drops the voltage ...

Dirty circuit board, possibly; more likely an internal leak.

Warning, you can leap high into the air by messing with a capacitor, even long after the device has been unplugged. In a CRT this can kill you very dead. I dunno about flat panels.
posted by hank at 3:50 PM on September 11, 2007

note - 19 in CRT replaced with a 22 in flat panel. thank you all very much.
posted by mrmojoflying at 3:11 PM on September 12, 2007