monitor weirdness

Once in a while my monitor goes weird. I can't see any pattern in what sets it off except maybe opening a graphic file in IrfanView. It never seems to happen until after I've had my system running for a while, so maybe it has to do with heat, but on the other hand I can be on for a very long time without anything going wrong.

I get about 2 variations of the weirdness. The first is a sudden mess-up of my graphic display. Everything is reduced to blockiness and horizontal stripes. Everything looks unstable, shimmering or shaking. I can see that the colours seem to derive from what's supposed to display. The only immediate preceding event is trying to open an image file. My solution is to do a re-boot followed by a scan disk. The second variation eventually leads into the same phenomenon described above but begins differently by messing up the Windows display fonts, that is, the fonts displaying text in Windows Explorer, dialogue boxes, etc. The other content of a screen remains OK. The bad test is not replaced by miscellaneous character but instead just looks as if somebody had rubbed it half out, like a really, really bad fax. It's unreadable. This gets progessively worse until the the first variation (above) happens.

My monitor is a 17-inch ASTVision 7U, bought second-hand. The problem only began some time after switching to this monitor. I wondered if I might not have the correct driver, but I couldn't find anything for it. When I first connected the monitor, Windows Plug-N-Play seemed to know what to do with it.

Any suggestions would be much appreicated.

 

I think I would start with my case off and see if the problem coinsides with my cpu fan stopping. Could be your video card overheating also. It may not happen with the case off. A little can of compressed air will blow the dust out of your fans including PS fans and will also cool the video card down enough to straighten it up for awhile.

Could also be the reason you were able to buy a second hand monitor. Borrow a friends and see if the problem goes away. I tried a borrowed monitor once and found that my video card was bad. It worked fine if I turned the accelleration all the way down.

Bill

 

OK, thanks, good ideas, I'll give them a try. Can a wider monitor put more strain on a video card and cause it to overheat? Do video cards have limits for the monitors they support? I'd never heard of that before. I'll try testing the video card for overheating, but I'd be surprised, since after the problem arises I can solve it by doing a reboot, which doesn't give a lot of time for cooling the card.