Vertical coloured bars ??

SaracenSaracen At the puter !
edited September 2004 in Hardware
I'm looking at a problem with a friends PC whereby just before the XP logon screen the monitor displays coloured vertical bars. Just before this, ie. the Windows XP startup screen with the progress bar going left to right, the display is OK. Just as the login screen is about to appear, bang, coloured vertical bars !

The PC is an old Dell, the adapter a Sapphire 9200 SE ( I know, POS)
The Dell BIOS has been updated and he's running the latest Catalyst drivers (although we tried older ones first). This is an intermittent problem and if you push the power switch the PC will shutdown OK, cycle the power again and usually its OK second time around.

Any ideas ?

Comments

  • CreepCreep Hell Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    Try a new video card or a new monitor
  • MediaManMediaMan Powered by loose parts.
    edited September 2004
    Go into safe mode and try setting the video card to 800x600 at 60hz. Check to ensure that the driver for that particular monitor is installed. Reboot.

    Is the problem still there?

    No? Then the monitor may not be able to support the resolution and scan rate you normally use. Typically monitors may display the OUT OF SYNC RANGE with a setting that is too big. EG: The monitor's max resolution may be 1024x768 at 75hz but if you set 1280x1024 at 75 hz...no go.

    It may be that the monitor is too old to display the OUT OF SYNC RANGE error and just goes .ppppppppfffft. on you like it is.
  • KometeKomete Member
    edited September 2004
    MediaMan wrote:
    Go into safe mode and try setting the video card to 800x600 at 60hz. Check to ensure that the driver for that particular monitor is installed. Reboot.

    Is the problem still there?

    No? Then the monitor may not be able to support the resolution and scan rate you normally use. Typically monitors may display the OUT OF SYNC RANGE with a setting that is too big. EG: The monitor's max resolution may be 1024x768 at 75hz but if you set 1280x1024 at 75 hz...no go.

    It may be that the monitor is too old to display the OUT OF SYNC RANGE error and just goes .ppppppppfffft. on you like it is.

    Dang beat me to it.. GJ
  • MediaManMediaMan Powered by loose parts.
    edited September 2004
    Komete wrote:
    Dang beat me to it.. GJ

    /me types 3 WPM faster. :D
  • SaracenSaracen At the puter !
    edited September 2004
    The monitor is a 17" Sony CPD 200 and XP recognises it OK in Device Manager. Video adapter set to 800x600, 16bit colour at 70Hz. The monitor is more than capable of supporting these settings and works fine on my system that runs 1024x768, 32bit colour at 80Hz.

    Time to tell him to get something better ......?
  • MediaManMediaMan Powered by loose parts.
    edited September 2004
    The SONY CDP200SF model can support up to 1280x1024 at 75 Hz vertical frequency.

    You've verified that the monitor works on your system but doesn't work on his. The variable is the video card now. Now the other test would be to plug your working monitor into his system and see what happens.

    If the same problem still exists at 800x600 @ 60 Hz then it's no long the monitor but the video card.

    Just a matter of eliminating the variables.
  • MAGICMAGIC Doot Doot Furniture City, Michigan Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    i had a problem like that where i had the agp set to 8x in my graphics settings but 4x in the bios.
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