It could be a power supply unit or motherboard that is going bad.

--
DaveW



"Michelle" wrote in message
...
Hi everyone,

I've been having a problem and I'm hoping someone here can help me...
first my
stats:

WinXP home, sp1
768 ram
1.7 gig P4
brand new viewsonic 19" monior
ATI Radeon 9200 128 mb graphics card (also brand new)
40 gig HD, plenty of free space.

Now for the problem :-)... about a month ago I started noticing display
problems. After doing a bunch of research on the web (and calling Dell
even
though my service had expired with them) we determined we needed a new
monitor.
The screen was shaking badly intermittently and at times, it would seem
almost
as if someone shined a flashlight across it. The size of the display was
also
shrinking the longer I had the monitor turned on. If it was in sleep mode
long
enough,the full size would return, but after a few minutes it would shrink
again. This was a 17" monitor running 1024 x 768 with a 75 hz refresh
rate.
So... I bought a new monitor, set it up, installed the viewsonic drivers
and
the problem was still there...
Also, I should mention that when I right clicked the display properties
and
choose properties, settings, all was ok but the second I clicked the
advanced
button on the settings tab, the screen would either shrink to almost
nothing or
black out, then come back. (this was without making any changes at all).

So, after the new monitor didn't fix anything we determined that the
graphics
card could be the problem so I had someone install it for me on Saturday.
At
the time he installed it, we also downloaded the latest drivers for the
graphics card and the new monitor at MS. After all was said & done, we
still
had the same problem.

We rebooted a few times, then the screen appeared more stable but
flickering
because it had defaulted to a 60 hz refresh rate. I accessed the display
properties again (but this time it accessed normally, no blacking out-I'm
guessing this may have been due to the new graphics card?) and noticed it
had
set the display back to 16 bit color. I changed it back to 32 bit, hit
apply,
all was fine. Then I tried upping the refresh rate to 75 hz (I was going
to
try 75, then 85 which is supposedly optimal for the resolution I'm running
now,
1152x864). The second I upped the refresh rate, the problems returned so
I
turned it back to 60 hz which is just not high enough, the flickering is
giving
me eyestrain. Whatever I've tried, it just doesn't seem to want to accept
anything higher, even though I have the display set to hide modes that the
monitor can't handle and 60, 70, 75 & 85 are the listed refresh rates.

This afternoon, I'm planning to move the monitor and tower to another part
of
the house to see if it makes a difference but before I do that, I wanted
to see
if anyone here may have some ideas about what the problem could be. (btw,
I
don't play games on my pc, mainly e-mail, websurfing and graphics)

I did recently get a new TV that is located 3-4 feet away from the monitor
and
tower, could this possibly be the problem? (it's only 2 inches bigger than
the
older one, a 27") I've been pulling my hair out (figuratively) over this
problem, it's really driving me nuts and my house is small so I'm kind of
limited to where I can put my computer desk, not to mention the tv is in a
large (heavy) entertainment center which will not be fun to move, but I'll
do
whatever I can to get this problem fixed.

Thanks in advance for any help, ideas or advice from all of you. I hope
someone can help me :-))
Michelle ;-)

Michelles Paint Shop Pro & More!
http://members.aol.com/Mish234/index.html
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