Acer AL2216W

[Neuromancer]

The last few days I was having problems with some text on screen getting garbled. I thought it had to do with Operas "fit to width" cuz clicking that fixed it.

Two nights a go I went to a watch a movie... it would play for... 15 seconds then the screen would freeze, the sound would play for another 10 seconds then the monitor shuts off and the sound goes into a stutter. restart...

Played with this a little And eventually it started freezing no matter what.

So I figured MCE got borked, I will install Vista again.

Well was running my 2 monitors.. (22" acer as mentioned on a DVI cable) then I was running my 19" crt on a DVI to VGA adapter.

In Vista both monitors were mirror images. I could not enable the second monitor at all. (acer)

Switched to just Acer on DVI. No picture at all.. Amber power button//

Switched to VGA cable and it seems to be okay.



Is this a bad DVI cable (can they go bad, even if you dont abuse them?) Bad monitor? Bad Video card or bad drivers? (7.4 cats)

System:

DFI Infinisty RS482
Athlon x2 4600
4x512MB OCZ value RAM
2 36GB raptors
2 320GB seagate perps
580W hiper Type R
x1950xt 256MB
Azuntech X-Mystique Sound Card

Thanks

[Slayer2003]

I would start with the DVI cable, as anything could have happened to it on the way to your house.

Do you have the LCD plugged into a surge protector or battery backup? Did the power flicker recently? Does the back of the LCD run rather warm/hot to the touch, more than normal?

You said you ran 2 LCDs in clone mode, have you tried swapping the acer to the other plug on the vid card? Hopefully that's not it, but worth a try.

Does the monitor have a setting to switch between 2 inputs? Is the VGA input selected for some reason and not the DVI?

Since you said it worked fine when yo switched to the standard VGA cable, I'm hoping it's just the bad DVI cable. If it's not the cable, something internaly may have gotten messed up on the digital input side. But, again, it's worth buying a new cable for around $20 to find out.

[Neuromancer]

The second monitor is CRT.
Now the monitor is not obviously damaged, and the cable appears okay as well, and has always been plugged into a surge protector. I found a person with the same problem recently on google groups... but they posted they solved the problem and didnt say how it was done.
I tried a couple more things and notice I am having problems with VGA also.

Exiting a game I need to hard restart to get back to desktop.
Wierd thing is... when I use the DVI cable.. I get a post screen but it shuts off after that.

I am leaning more towards software issue now, since the screen lockup sort of occured with the 7.3 drivers I just tried. Except I could ctrl alt del to the logon screen and that appeared fine... but couldnt get the desktop back. Although this problem does not occur at all with the CRT (vga). So maybe it is hardware (would make more sense I suppose)


Going to try a few more things before I throw this through the window.

[Neuromancer]

Update: I decided to run onlythe CRT last night for a while to do some gmaing.

It does occur on the CRT also. So I guess the LCD is fine, the problem is either Vid Card or Software.

[Neuromancer]

Decided to try something different. Removed my video card and tried running DVI off the onboard video chipset.

Goofed around in the bios a little (had to reset a couple of times) had some wierd issues, which I though maybe my PSU was failing... replaced video card, still no go.

Well I just updated my BIOS (I was running original from a while back when I was experimenting with surround view) and now DVI works :)

yah!! :beer:

[Slayer2003]

Wow, funky DVI vid card problems, fixed from a BIOS update? That's a first I think lol.

Good job though, n glad ya got it working again. :beer: