PC screen help required

[ALIB]

the display on my laptop is gradually being degraded by vertical lines, which appear to be increasing in density over time.

Any clues ? screen resolution settings etc ? Or is this a forewarning of imminant PC demise ?

help appreciated as i may not be able to read the screen for too much longer the way things are going

ali b

[maestro]

the display on my laptop is gradually being degraded by vertical lines, which appear to be increasing in density over time.

Any clues ? screen resolution settings etc ? Or is this a forewarning of imminant PC demise ?

help appreciated as i may not be able to read the screen for too much longer the way things are going

ali b

Is this accompanied by any sort of 'humming' sound?

[orgone]

the display on my laptop is gradually being degraded by vertical lines, which appear to be increasing in density over time.

Any clues ? screen resolution settings etc ? Or is this a forewarning of imminant PC demise ?

ali b

Not all of it, just the LCD panel. Could be anything from loosening connections btwn the body and the panel to the panel itself. Try squeezing lightly around the outer edge of the panel - if the lines go ,change or get worse, the LCD panel likely is bad. Either way, someone'll need to take a closer look at the innards. If you're mechanically inclned, there are lots of descriptions online that show how to get into a laptop. Also try connecting a monitor to the external video connector and if worse comes to worst, use that and abandon your main screen (at the expense of portability).

[lambchops]

Is this accompanied by any sort of 'humming' sound?

hahahah excellent!!

[Ulysses]

AliB:

I think it might be one of a few things*:

1) If your laptop is fairly high-spec and has it's own mobile graphics card inside it sounds as if you are getting 'artefacts'. These can be caused by the graphics card getting too hot or it starting to die.

2) If not and you have integrated graphics within your laptop then it might be the panel about to go. Do you 'finger/poke'** the screen? Sometimes this can lead to a hairline crack vertically and the liquid crystals can sort of pool around the area of the fault...hence the lines.

It might be worthwhile buying a cheap (I have some spare if you need to borrow one) VGA lead and hooking your laptop up to your tele/spare monitor...if no lines on the 'secondary screen' then it's your laptop at fault.


* I used to build my own PCs and don't know too much about latptops.

** Can lambchops resist the double entendres??

[stuart]

It looks like hardware but it is worthwhile making sure your video drivers are not involved. On boot select BIOS (usually <F2> <F10> or whatever flashes up on screen before windows starts (are you running Windows?).

This will use the screen without the OS video drivers. Now does the fault persist as you go through the setup pages?

Stuart

[chrisj1948]

Unfortunately most probably a fault in the LCD screen electronics used to drive the matrix which controls the screen pixels. Unless it is a very expensive laptop replacement of the entire unit would probably be the cheapest option.

Regards
Chris