Lines on Monitor (SOLVED)

[ff103]

Hello Everyone: I have an Acer P201 22 inch widescreen monitor set at 1440 x 900 and in 2009.2 and also in 2010 beta2 , I have faint "rolling" lines that go from the bottom up on my monitor. In both systems I have the correct Nvidia driver and I only have two hertz settings to pick from, 60 and 75. On 60 the lines are slower and on 75 they move faster. Should I use some other hertz setting and would I just change it in Xorg conf to say 50 hertz? Or do I need to try something else? Any help is appreciated.  

[kjpetrie]

This could be a driver problem, but it could also be a hardware problem. It sounds awfully like power supply capacitors drying out with age. That could be in the PC or the monitor, so the first thing I would do is test your monitor with another PC and your PC with another monitor, to see whether  the lines stick with any particular unit. If it's the PC the PSU is probably quite easy to replace. If it's the monitor it will have to be replaced or repaired.

[ff103]

This could be a driver problem, but it could also be a hardware problem. It sounds awfully like power supply capacitors drying out with age. That could be in the PC or the monitor, so the first thing I would do is test your monitor with another PC and your PC with another monitor, to see whether  the lines stick with any particular unit. If it's the PC the PSU is probably quite easy to replace. If it's the monitor it will have to be replaced or repaired.

Thanks kjpetrie, l'll try and give you a run down on what I know and go from there. I am using the Nvidia drivers picked by 2010 for GForce 7300 and it seems to be the only one that works. The power supply is only about 2 months old and the monitor is about 18 months old. This monitor does not do this on my windows box that is about 3 years older than the PCLos box. Both boxes have Nvidia cards in them. One is pci express and the windows box has an older agp card. Hope this helps.

[AndrzejL]

Hello Everyone: I have an Acer P201 22 inch widescreen monitor set at 1440 x 900 and in 2009.2 and also in 2010 beta2 , I have faint "rolling" lines that go from the bottom up on my monitor. In both systems I have the correct Nvidia driver and I only have two hertz settings to pick from, 60 and 75. On 60 the lines are slower and on 75 they move faster. Should I use some other hertz setting and would I just change it in Xorg conf to say 50 hertz? Or do I need to try something else? Any help is appreciated.  

Hi FF103

Have You been visiting Your optician lately? Are You wearing glasses? Are Your glasses the most accurate for You? Is the world all blurry and out of focus?...

Hope this helps.

Andy

[ff103]

Hi FF103 Smiley

Have You been visiting Your optician lately? Are You wearing glasses? Are Your glasses the most accurate for You? Is the world all blurry and out of focus?...

Hope this helps.

Andy

Well let's see, Yes, No, I don't know, and No , I actually can't wear my glasses when working on my computer, at this distance everything looks better without them, or at least I thought it did

[kilobit]

Not to defer the topic but apparently I see "artifacts" and things nobody else sees.  My brother in law has an lcd hd tv and everytime I move my eyes from the tv I see red/green/blue from the tv. Also, 60hz fluorescent light really make me anxious and I can see the refresh rates that does not bother other people.
Granted, if you think that it is enough scrolling lines that you visually see to post here I would agree that there is an issue.  I would also say that it is a grounding issue with your dvi cable itself, computer, or oscillation from your power board inside your lcd moving through your logic board inside your lcd. I dont think its the os or the driver, but anything is possible.

-Can you boot into another os and see the lines?
change your resolutions, then change your graphic card completely to find out if its your lcd or graphic card, or something else.

[kjpetrie]

I'm assuming the monitor is lcd. If it is CRT it could be sensitive to vibration and refresh rates are more important. Is it correctly identified in the monitor section of PCC? Have you tried moving it around  to see whether it's picking up interference from the computer? Have you tried the monitor from your other box with this computer and it so does it have the same problem? We need to narrow it down.

Screen artefacts from video cards are not unknown, but this sounds more like some sort of analogue ripple on the picture.

When you say the lines move more slowly at 60 Hz how slow is that and how many lines are there?

[ff103]

Hello Everyone and thanks for all the help, yes it is an LCD monitor and it is correctly identified in PCC. I use two computers, one pclinux box and one windows box and they both share this monitor and a mouse and keyboard via a belkin kdm switch. This monitor is not using HD cable. The 60hertz lines seem to start at the
bottom and "roll" up the screen about 1 every half second. At 75 hertz it is at least 3 times that fast. Yes the word "ripple" does seem to describe it better, and the ripple lines cover the entire screen from bottom to top, at 60 hertz about 10 lines maybe. Upon further testing resolution does seem to have an effect, but only "lower" resolutions. This monitor was recognized and set at 1440x900 by PCC and is very clear at that resolution, it will accept higher, but lower ones seem fuzzy to me. As close as I can describe it , it looks like when you see a tv picture on a tv show and the ripples that go up the picture, just not that drastic, much fainter. I'm still experimenting with it and will report anything new I find. Thanks for the assistance and everyone have a great day.

[kjpetrie]

OK, so it's not mains frequency and nor is it the chopper frequency of a typical PSU, but its a few hundred Hz. It's a bit low for a parasitic oscillation in the cables and possibly low for noise from the fans, though that could be possible. I presume it's still there if you take the switch out and run a direct feed, or lift the monitor off the desk.

It's obviously not the monitor as it's fine with the Windows box. If you can afford to shut down you could run a pclos livecd on the Windows box or even swap the hard drives if the machines are similar enough (but beware Windows activation). That would enable you to be sure whether it's hardware or software.

I think it's a case of hunting down by the process of elimination, until you can establish where it's coming from. At least you have two computers to compare, but I don't envy you the task.

[Rudge]

ff103, a long shot but here goes. Turn off all the lights and see if it does this in a completely dark room.

[kaptain_zero]

I would strongly suggest eliminating the switching box from your setup and testing the monitor with a single cable between your pclos computer and the monitor, and I would use the cable from the Windows computer for this test as that has shown a clear picture. In the past, I have had all sorts of weird artifacts from the use of switching boxes.... I do have two computers hooked up to my current monitor, but I rely on the multiple inputs on the monitor itself, rather than 3 cables and a separate switching box.  You could  simply swap the windows and linux computer video cables... leave them attached to the switch box and just swap the computer connections if you have not already tried that, but personally, I would run a single (known to be good) cable straight from the video output, to the monitor and see what it looks like then. If that single cable is clear... it's something in your setup, if it still shows the same issue, try a different cable and if it's still the same.... then it's time to investigate the video card etc.

I'm betting it's in your cabling.

Regards

Christian

[Texstar]

Maybe plug it in to a different power outlet.



I've got Lions on my monitor too.

[Rudge]

I thought he said Limes?? 

[Texstar]

I thought he said Limes?? 

tee hee!

[ff103]

Well at least so far my plight has been fun Lions and limes, HA! , I like the live cd idea on the windows box, I'll give that a go first, then try a direct cable with no switch. Oh, and I did try turning out the lights and I could still see the limes, I mean lions, well you know what I mean, they were still there ,  Thanks everyone.