How to Troubleshoot Any Computer Monitor Problems

Your computer monitor is one of the most robust pieces of hardware on your computer, however monitors do go bad too.Below are some troubleshooting tips that can help you with almost any monitor issue.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. BLANK PICTURE
   
   Sometimes the cable goes bad and the only way to actually check that is to use another cable to verify it.
   
   In addition sometimes when you use cable adapters to convert a AVI cable to a DVI cable the monitor will go to sleep and it will not wake the the monitor back up even thought the computer wakes up. Save yourself a lot of headaches and get cable that matches the plug in your computer and the back of your monitor.

2. DISPLAY SETTINGS ARE INCORRECT
   
   At times if you change your monitor to a larger screen size the video card might not support that size monitor. Play around with the video settings to try to accommodate for that. If you still can't get it to work, buy a new video card. Below this article is a link to adjust your video card settings.

3. IMAGE IS ROTATED
   
   Most newer monitors support dual monitors often individuals will rotate the image canvas so that they can view the screen in portrait mode. This makes it easy to read long blog post or view long emails. Go into your video settings and there should be a place to rotate the canvas back to it's original orientation.

4. CAN'T RUN DUAL MONITOR
   
   Check to see if your video card supports dual monitor. In addition some video cards say they support dual monitor however if you use two panoramic monitors it might not support the additional monitor due to length. I suggest buying a more high end video card to support that additional real estate.
   
   There is a setting in your graphics card that should allow you to extend your monitor. If you don't enable this command and try to run dual monitors it will not work. Below is a link to show you how to set up dual monitors.

5. HORIZONTAL LINES APPEAR ON THE SCREEN WHEN I TURN ON THE MONITOR
   
   This means your monitor is dead and beyond all repair. It is a tell tell sign that the monitor is burnt out and is no longer repairable. Buy a new monitor.

Resources

• Common Monitor problems
• Changing Your Display Settings
• Set Up Dual Monitors

[chapaken1231]

on 11/9/2009 A few weeks ago I had a malicious computer virus that defied solution. Fortunately, the anti-virus support team of Mircosoft came up with the remedy. About a week after this, what seemed like miniature artwork began appearing on the bottom right side of my monitor. It started out as a line and what seemed like a Japanese pagoda. Today, it is 8 lines vertically stacked and 7 pagodas- one for each line. What causes such lines and what can be done to erase or remove them? My monitor is a Gateway purchased in January, 2006.