Maximum PC

I have a 4 year old Samsung LCD monitor which has started having a problem as of last night. I'm not completely familiar with how LCD monitors work but I think they use some kind of backlighting to display the screen. What my monitor has started doing is the top half of the screen is noticably dimmer than the bottom half. The bottom half looks normal but starting at about the middle of the screen and then going up, the screen is still visible but dim.

I have 2 of these monitors hooked up on the same system and the other monitor is still working fine so I am pretty sure it is a hardware problem with the one monitor. Is this a sign the monitor is pretty much dying on me?

Yeah, it sure sounds like it.
Have you tried to reverse the monitor connections to make sure it's not the GPU?
Do you have another GPU you can try?

bullnettle59 is on to something here...but instead of a different video card, just swap the monitor cables. If the monitor that was good is now messed up it is the video card. If the monitor that was messed up before is still messed up you know it its the monitor and not the video card.

My money is on the monitor being bad and you are right it is the back-light that is failing.

Nasty

So as a follow up to the previous problem. I am fairly certain it is a problem with the one monitor failing, when I swapped the cables, it is still the same monitor which is not fully lighting up.

I just dealt with it as the monitor was useable for the time. But now I am having a new problem with it. Now what happens is the bad monitor will work during boot up but as soon as windows 7 starts up, the monitor goes blank and there is no longer any display on it. If I turn the bad monitor off and then back on, I get about 2-3 seconds of the display working and then it goes blank again. The other good monitor continues to work just fine regardless.

So basically the failing monitor will not work more than a few seconds once it gets into windows. I can't really determine whether this is due to a video card problem or just the bad monitor is done for. I have an extra monitor but I can't seem to get it to be recognized. The video card has 2 DVI outputs which I am using on the good and bad monitor but the extra (test) monitor only has a VGA connection. I tried using a DVI to VGA converter to hook up the extra monitor to replace the bad DVI monitor but it is not being recognized. I wasn't sure if this was due to one monitor using DVI and the other using VGA.

Is it possible that my bad monitor is just in the next stage of failure? Or any advice on how I can hook up my 3rd monitor to test as a replacement?

To check and see if it is the monitor...which it is you know, just unplug the bad monitor and plug the good monitor into the port the bad monitor was plugged into. If windows comes up in all it glory then you know it is the monitor and not the video card. Time to replace the bad monitor. The monitor that is VGA may be not compatible with the resolution you are using, back it down to 1024X768 and see if the VGA monitor with the DVI dongle lights up. If it doesn't it may not be compatible with the system.

Nasty

Hi all

I recently got a new 120Hz 3D monitor and I am using it with a regular 60Hz monitor and I have a problem.

The 120Hz of my main monitor is absolutely amazing, everything is super fast and super smooth yet when I attempt to drag a window around in windows on my second monitor there is a slight lag before it moves.

So I click and drag it and it will have a very noticeable lag or latency to it for roughly 1 second but then after that its fine. If I release the window and move it again then the lag is back for the first second. If I drag a window the same way on my main monitor is responds instantly. When I turn my main monitor to run at 60Hz the problem goes away.

Anyone had this problem before or know how to fix it?

You just fixed it, leave the main monitor at 60 hertz and you are good to go ...or buy another 120 hertz monitor and get rid of the 60 hertz monitor. You are trying to mix apples with oranges and you can't do it without lag.

Nasty