[leader 2]

Hi. I appreciate any help anyone here can give in advance. Sorry for the length of this post, but I tried to thoroughly explain the problem. I am not technical so please use laymens terms when replying. Thanks for your understanding. 

 

I have a LG 22M33 monitor like this one here https://www.lg.com/u...D-B-led-monitor. I can't remember when I purchased it but I think it's at least 3 years old and possibly older. 

 

My mother had it on her computer for at least a year or possibly more. She would often forget to turn it off and it would be on all night with the light blinking. I thought maybe that was working on the monitor in terms of making it age more quickly or setting it up to have some issues that would need a repair or replacement. I have now had it in my room on my computer for a year or two and usually turn it off before bed, but have at times left the computer on all night with the monitor off. I rarely forget to turn it off if I will be away from my computer for an extended length of time.

 

Recently the monitor started showing distortion on the screen when I visit websites often. Please see the picture at the following link for an example of the distortion I sometimes see. https://ibb.co/FhqQskVThe distortion has gone away one it's own or when the page is refreshed sometimes. This has been going on maybe a few months, but I'm not exactly sure of when it started. The only thing I remember happening out of the ordinary around this time was that I accidentally kicked the surge protector that I use for my hard drives and external dvd burner while the computer was on. I didn't think this would affect the monitor since it's not plugged into that surge protector, but not long after that is when this problem started to occur.

 

Is something wrong with my monitor? If so how could I fix it? Or is something wrong with Windows 10 pro that can be fixed to correct this problem? If it helps you to know, my computer is a refurbished HP Compaq 8200 Elite Convertible Minitower that I've owned since 2017. It has a 7gb of ram and a i5 3.1 ghz 2400 processor. 

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   leader 2,

 

The best test that you can do is hook the screen up to another computer and test, a notebook will do, if the problem is still present you know the screen or the video cable that you are using is bad and likewise if there is no problem when connected to another computer you know that it is the present computer that has an issue.

[phillpower2]

   leader 2,

 

The best test that you can do is hook the screen up to another computer and test, a notebook will do, if the problem is still present you know the screen or the video cable that you are using is bad and likewise if there is no problem when connected to another computer you know that it is the present computer that has an issue.

[leader 2]

Thanks for your quick reply. I have another old computer. I will try to connect my monitor to it and see if works fine there. Please give a me a few days or so to get back to you.

[phillpower2]

You are welcome and no worries, reply when you are able to 

[leader 2]

Hi phillpower2. I have tested my monitor on a different computer now for the past couple of days and had no distortion issue whatsoever. Everything has been fine. The other computer was older and refurbished(HP Compaq 8200 Elite CMT, Intel Core i5-2400, 3.10GHz) that had 7 gb of ram and windows 10 pro. I've owned it since 2017. If it helps your knowledge on this issue there was something on that computer that concerned me before the issue started happening. I have a 6tb WD My book external drive. It makes the computer hang at startup so I try to not have the surge protector that it's plugged into on at startup. However quite a few times over the past about 2 years the computer rebooted while the surge protector was on with that hard drive and when it hung I had to do a cold shutdown by holding the power button until the computer just went off. I also had to do this several times when I forgot to turn the surge protector off before restarting or shutting down the computer and turning it back on.

 

This computer is plugged into a separate surge protector which I often forgot to turn off before powering it back on. If I remember when I tried to turn the computer back on it gave beep codes and  think the power key might have turned red (I can't exactly remember if it did or didn't). I think I then (when I had to) turned off the surge protector for that computer, waited a while and then turned the computer on after the turning it's surge protector back on. I think there have been as many as 20 occasions when I have had beep codes during those situations. Sometimes the monitor was on during these occasions, sometimes not. I don't know exactly what the beep codes meant, but I think they came from the motherboard due to the cold shutdowns. I'm not exactly sure. What do you think this means for that computer and this monitor?

 

[phillpower2]

Sorry leader 2 but this thread is regarding monitor issues and that is all that we will be discussing here, going off on a tangent is frowned upon at the best of times but when there is also a wall of text involved it makes matters worse.

 

Please stick to updating us on just the monitor issue and while explaining as best that you can try being as brief as possible, thanks.

[leader 2]

I\ understand what you are trying to say, but I wasn't going off on a tangent. I was trying to explain the issue as thoroughly as possible (which makes it not always very brief) to get the best possible answer for my problem. Everything I explained above is related to my monitor problem.

 

I'm not sure how to make this more brief without excluding important info that can help you understand my problem. I'm not an expert so I'm doing the best I can.

 

I put my monitor on another computer and it worked fine. If it is working fine on that computer then what is causing the problem on my other computer that would make the monitor have the distortion issue? And how do I fix it? Thank you.

[phillpower2]

Have you tried disconnecting the external HDD from the computer to see if the display is the same, brand name computers do not use the best of power supplies and even the small amount that the drive will be drawing from the USB port could be enough to affect the stability of the other hardware.

[leader 2]

Thanks for your reply. Do you mean I should put my monitor back on my  old computer with out the external hard drives attached to see if the distortion is gone?

[phillpower2]

That is correct and you are welcome 

[leader 2]

I put my monitor back on my old computer with the external hard drives detached. The problem still persists. What should I try now?

[phillpower2]

Nothing else to try atm, the testing that you have done so far has narrowed the issue down to it being related to the computer in some way and nothing to do with the screen or external HDD.

 

Download then run Speccy (free) and post the resultant url for us, details here, this will provide us with information about your computer hardware + any software that you have installed that may explain the present issue/s. 

 

To publish a Speccy profile to the Web:

1. In Speccy, click File, and then click Publish Snapshot.
2. In the Publish Snapshot dialog box, click Yes to enable Speccy to proceed.
3. Speccy publishes the profile and displays a second Publish Snapshot. You can open the URL in your default browser, copy it to the clipboard, or close the dialog box.

[leader 2]

Here is my url: 

 

http://speccy.pirifo...Ip7OcpQELuKUvJO

[phillpower2]

Two suggestions;

 

Change the Windows Power Plan to Balanced, you have it set at Power Saver at the moment and all those USB hard drives that you have connected could be depriving the rest of the hardware from the power that it needs, the computer only has a 320W PSU and it won`t be the best of quality so could be struggling with the extra load that the drives are putting on the USB ports, just a fyi, the USB HDDs may have their own external power supply but they do still rely on the USB for power as well.

 

If after a good spell of testing doing the above has not helped, the last test that you can do is to disconnect all of the external USB HDDs and again do some substantial testing, if you don`t have any problems after doing either of the above the issue will have been identified as a power problem.

[leader 2]

I appreciate your advice. I will change the plan to balanced and test it both of the ways you mentioned. Please allow me another several days to get back to you.