For Techies? What would you say is causing this >
 

One of my home PC's that was idol during the week long power outage from Hurricane Frances has been acting a bit weird recently since I'm using it again.

From time to time the screen goes black or parts of the screen go black. Sometimes just a small area surrounding folder icons goes black in the form of squares on every one.

The heat here was in the 80's during the outage but none of the other PC's are doing this.

I'm thinking either its the LCD monitor, or maybe a short in the video card or motherboard. But, its a new PC (under 12 months old).

Its working fine otherwise and I scanned all the drives for viruses and malware and found nothing and its software independent so its not that.

Any thoughts??

Sorry this is unrelated: What is your priority urgent email address?

i had a desktop that would act that way, but it was usually when memory ran low

Did you test it with another monitor?

Did you reinstall video drivers etc?

If you send it now I'll go check my e-mail. [email protected]

power supply?

Hmmm, plenty of mem unless one went south on me.

I'll have to run a mem test. Thanks Bru.

sounds like some semen has hit the monitor.

Any loads go off course?

No my dog can't reach that high.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

/\

I have one of those extra wattage units and its under a year old. They usually hold up for a few years from my experience.

nope. nothing new installed since the storm.

It only happens about once or twice a day which is what's puzzling.

restart the machine.... run everything.... system restore, virus scan, spyware programs, check your firewall alerts, do a disc cleanup, run defrag.....

When I have a stupid problem I just do it all and it usually fixes the problem....

If not backup and format c

Try removing and reseating your video card.

sounds like low on resources or maybe video mem went bad
also overheating could be source of a problem.

for resources check in task manager, see used memory against physical memory, if used more than you have phisically - reboot and/or kill some processes.

if that didn't help or system resources are ok, open your box check if all fans work alright and not dusty.

if non of the above then take to technician, could be video card or something else.

doubt that monitor can be cause of it.

yeah, before you decide to take to tech, just in case, as someone said above, take out video card and memory sticks and put them back this sometimes does a trick.

monitor glitch? pixels burnt out or something?

That's a good idea. I'll definitely try that one.

Get motherboard monitor and check your temps.

Could be overheating

that's what I was going to recommend. Make sure all your cards are seated real well.

Boards at 28C and CPU is at 45C.

I have similiar problems from time to time. What I *THINK* happens, in my case, is that the heat expansion causes cards to move slightly. Sometimes the result is clearly video failure while other times it's just tiny little glitches like you've described.

While you're in there, vacuum everything out. Dust builds up and I've actually heard of shorts being caused over a long enough period of time. Remember to use a vacuum with a plastic nozel so as not to send out too much static.