Gray bands across screen

"D F Bonnett" wrote in message
...
I have Samsung 955DF monitor and a 16 meg AGP video card. Everything
was working fine. All of a sudden, there are light gray bands across
the screen. Also, the print, especially the fine fonts like Arial,
seem a bit fuzzy. Thegray bands seem to be the width of the characters
on the line of type and the more characters the darker the gray in the
open areas.
Any suggestions about how to troubleshoot this and diagnose the source
of the problem would be most helpful.
TIA
DFB



you need to determine if it;s a monitor problem or a video card/video driver
problem

the first thing you could do is reboot and hit F5 to enter safe mode


since safe mode will use minimum video settings, if the image is still poor
there's a chance the monitor is bad

the best way to tell for sure would be to try a different monitor
(or try the monitor on a different computer)

On Sun, 13 Jul 2003 18:00:31 GMT, D F Bonnett
wrote:

I have Samsung 955DF monitor and a 16 meg AGP video card. Everything
was working fine. All of a sudden, there are light gray bands across
the screen. Also, the print, especially the fine fonts like Arial,
seem a bit fuzzy. Thegray bands seem to be the width of the characters
on the line of type and the more characters the darker the gray in the
open areas.
Any suggestions about how to troubleshoot this and diagnose the source
of the problem would be most helpful.
TIA
DFB

What video card?

These are horizontal bands?

I've seen a bunch of Dell/nVidia Geforce 256 cards that did something
similar or same as you decribe. In other words, after playing around
with the cable, making sure it's plugging fully into the card and
routed away from any sources of interferance, I'd try a different
video card.


Dave

On Sun, 13 Jul 2003 18:00:31 GMT, D F Bonnett
wrote:

I have Samsung 955DF monitor and a 16 meg AGP video card. Everything
was working fine. All of a sudden, there are light gray bands across
the screen. Also, the print, especially the fine fonts like Arial,
seem a bit fuzzy. Thegray bands seem to be the width of the characters
on the line of type and the more characters the darker the gray in the
open areas.
Any suggestions about how to troubleshoot this and diagnose the source
of the problem would be most helpful.
TIA
DFB
Thanks to all who replied. I swapped out the monitor and it was the
same. Tried the old 4 meg card and that cured it. Going to get a new
card, 16 megs or better so i can get full use of the monitor.
Again, thanks.

philo wrote:
would be most helpful.
TIA
DFB
Thanks to all who replied. I swapped out the monitor and it was the
same. Tried the old 4 meg card and that cured it. Going to get a new
card, 16 megs or better so i can get full use of the monitor.
Again, thanks.



just a thought...
before you get a new card you could give it one more shot
and try reinstalling the video drivers


Philo,

I don't know what OS you're running but ME/2000/XP use F8 to enter safe
mode.

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On Sun, 13 Jul 2003 17:14:28 -0500, "philo"
wrote:

would be most helpful.
TIA
DFB
Thanks to all who replied. I swapped out the monitor and it was the
same. Tried the old 4 meg card and that cured it. Going to get a new
card, 16 megs or better so i can get full use of the monitor.
Again, thanks.



just a thought...
before you get a new card you could give it one more shot
and try reinstalling the video drivers


That was the first thing I tried using the latest drivers I could
find. Uninstalled it all, used default drivers, same thing.

Now for the big question..

What is a good value in an AGP card? The monitor is a Samsung 955DF,
used mostly for text, word processing, general surfing, no gaming.
System itself is at the back end of its life, WinME, 300 Celeron, 128
megs RAM.

My Nvidia TNT64 did EXACTLY the same thing as you describe. I thought it was
the monitor, the drivers, etc, but trust me, its definitely the graphics
card. I think it happens particularly when their is a rapid change in
temperature. I moved house - ie the pc tower from indoors out to the car,
etc and after that it happened...