only 1 monitor showing garbled images on multi-monitor set up

[molecul3]

Hi all,

I am sure many of you may have experienced this issue before but I find it quite difficult to search for solutions because I am not sure what to use as a search string.. so here it goes...

I have one user who has a Matrox Quad display card that outputs to 4 x LCD monitors. What happened today was that he was seeing garbled images on only one of the monitors. certain text and images on the screen started flickering, new windows just showed a blank white window, moving your mouse lead to a mouse trail as if the pixels were disappearing. Please note that it is not the entire screen but bits and pieces here and there. When you dragged the garbled windows to a different monitor, the window itself would not recover but that "normal" monitor would not be affected. I swapped a monitor but same thing. I rebooted the PC and all was fine. I am thinking of updating the driver but I was just wondering if anyone has ever experienced such a scenario?

 

[MMSMSD]

Since you swapped monitors and the problem did not follow the monitor, then it's the card or the drivers. Since the 'defect' in the display would move from window to window (when you dragged it), then it's not a physical hardware output issue. That leaves the video card RAM or the drivers.

I recommend you get a video RAM test program (either from the video card manufacturer or a generic one) and run a comprehensive test of your video memory. My guess is that there is a bad spot and it's showing up as what you describe. That would explain why you're not getting any error messages when this happens. There are a ton of testers out there but here's one I found quickly via Google:

http://majorgeeks.com/Video_Memory_Stress_Test__d5896.html

The answer may be to simply open the computer and clean out the video card with some compressed air. If the video memory tests OK, then you can try updating the driver but I'm assuming that nothing changed in software when the problem started. Hope this helps.

 

[BadBigBen]

The answer may be to simply open the computer and clean out the video card with some compressed air.

or it may just be corrosion build up that is hampering the electrical flow...

unplug and replug the card several times, that give it a better connection... also you could use a pencil eraser to clean the contacts on the gfx card... and then retry...


Ben
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