[Tikatu]

Hopefully that caught someone's eye...

I've got a Envision 19" LCD monitor that I've had for a few years now. Over the past couple of days I've noticed the background on my solitaire games has been a bit wonky. My graphic artist daughter saw the same thing I did and mentioned that it's highly pixellated, as if it had been saved as a very low resolution jpeg file in Photo Shop. She got me to boot up GIMP and test out some of the green shades with a bucket fill to see if it was a monitor problem or perhaps something else. We did a very light green, almost neon, and it looked fine. A very dark green also seemed fine. But an inbetween shade (#2F8600 to be precise) showed a really weird set of blinking pixels, like waves of the snow you see on a TV channel you don't get. However, when I closed out of the solitaire game, the GIMP bucket fill slowed down for a bit and even seemed to stop blinking. Not for long though; about a minute later it returned to its wild and wavy ways.

None of the other colors seem to be having this pixellation problem. Here's my question: is there anything I can do about this other than buying a new monitor?

Thanks in advance!

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Do you have another monitor to test the system with?
That would verify if it is a system issue or a monitor issue depending on what you see.

[rshaffer61]

Do you have another monitor to test the system with?
That would verify if it is a system issue or a monitor issue depending on what you see.

[Tikatu]

No, I don't have another monitor. Unless a laptop will do.

[rshaffer61]

I don't think you can input video into the laptop from the computer.
My opinion is it is the monitor but without trying my suggestion it would be hard to know. It really is the only way to test the monitor to make sure it is working correctly.
What you could do is hook the monitor to the laptop and see if it shows green there. If it does then yes it is the monitor.

[Tikatu]

I plugged the monitor into the laptop and it booted just a little way, then gave me a "No Signal" sign and stopped (while the laptop kept booting to the log in screen).

I think I have my answer, though. This evening I noticed that light blue has joined the green in pixellation (which means dropped out pixels in blue link text) and a pinkish purple shows the same pattern. I have to conclude it's the monitor. Unless there's something else to check?

ETA: I looked at the drivers for the monitor and noticed these things:

Driver date: 1/6/2007 (which means this is quite old as monitors go)
Driver files were in C:\\Windows\system32\DRIVERS (which gave me a turn as I'm on a 64-bit Windows7 machine)

Everything I've really seen tells me that this monitor was compatible with Vista, but doesn't mention Windows7. Would updating the driver help at all or is this a lost cause?

Edited by Tikatu, 18 August 2012 - 10:25 PM.

[rshaffer61]

It may help but I would need to know the model number to find the correct driver.
Envision 19" LCD monitor

[Tikatu]

The model number is H1981. I couldn't find it on the Envision site.

[rshaffer61]

This is not good as I am finding no drivers for anything newer then Win ME.
Lets try a different way and use DriverMax to see if it can find one.

Download DriverMax and have it scan your system. It will open their website with all the out of date drivers you can update. With the free version you can update only 2 drivers per day so if you have a lot of them it will take a few days to get everything updated. I have been using it for about 4 months now and like it better then any other utility out there for keeping my drivers up to date.
If you want you can post screenshots of all the drivers in the list that need to be updated and I will suggest in what order to get them.

[Tikatu]

There are 7 listed. Here they are.

[rshaffer61]

None of them have anything to do with the monitor.
That would mean there is no newer driver available.
I would suggest start at the top and get two a day till you have everything updated.
The sad part is you are looking at replacing the monitor now.

[Tikatu]

Oddly enough, the pixellation has calmed down today and isn't really in evidence! My older son blamed the problem on the younger son's League of Legends game. I'll keep an eye on it over the next few days -- I may be able to limp along without having to buy a new one so soon.

Thanks for all your help!

Edited by Tikatu, 19 August 2012 - 01:14 PM.

[rshaffer61]

My older son blamed the problem on the younger son's League of Legends game

If this was the case then I suspect that just restarting the system would correct that issue.

[rshaffer61]

Are you still having problems with your issue?
It has been 26 days since your last response and I was wondering if the issue has been resolved?
If so can you explain how it was resolved so others may be able to fix it if they have the same issue.
If not please let us know and we can continue with helping you to resolve the issue.

[Tikatu]

Thanks for poking me.

The problem is still intermittent, with more days off than days on. It might have something to do with game usage, but I'm not sure. I expect I'll have to solve it by getting a new monitor eventually.

Thanks for your time and your help.

[rshaffer61]

A option might be taking it to a repair shop and see if they can test it on one of their monitors. Might be a 25 dollar charge but it will tell you for sure if it is your monitor or something else.