Is this laptop screen ghosting? How do I prevent/fix this?

I'm not exactly sure if the proper term here is "ghosting". My laptop screen suddenly is having these strange white markings. I can't take a screenshot of it because it is a physical problem. So I took with a camera. Take a look:


That particular horizontal white line in the screenshot was caused by Google Chrome window. Most days I don't let it bother me, but this is really distracting.

To explain how this happens:
Most UI design today have white edges to make windows appear glowing or glassy. As of late, glowing/glassy-edged windows have a negative effect on my screen as they leave some artifacts. These artifacts are always white and semi-opaque, thus I call it ghosting. It could be a line, sometimes the shape of a tab or a button, and on rare ocassion, even the letters from the title bar is "imprinted". I don't think it's serious because they disappear over time when I shut off my screen. So is this caused by having my laptop screen open for too long? Sometimes these ghost imprints develop even after three hours of having my laptop open. A standard dead pixel tester cannot fix this. I have my laptop open almost whole day everyday.

Ideas? Clarifications? Tips?

Sorry to reply so late. I haven't been able to receive notifications from winsevenforums.com lately. Hmmm...

Thanks for clarifying. I have read about Screen Burn but I just can't picture it.
Anyway, my screen is LCD (3-year old ASUS UL80A laptop). And I only started noticing this after 2 years of heavy usage, although at the time it was very tiny. Now it has grown, but the size is not consistent as sometimes its long, sometimes as big as a standard cigarette lighter.

I now set my laptop to shut off monitor after 5 mins. of idle time, and I adjusted it to hibernate if I have been away for 2 hours (because it happens that I just fall asleep when I've been reading for too long from the screen ;p )

Hi there,
turning off monitor when idle surely improved my screen's dwindling health. The ghosting still appears but its a long time for it to build up in size and they don't appear as big as when I first reported about this here. Also, I opted for a dark wallpaper, which somehow negates the white edges/borders that cause the ghosting. They're still there though. Until it becomes an untolerable annoyance, I guess replacement is the only solution.

It sounds like a video card or display fault. A screen shot won't show it because the screen shot grabs the image (data) before it is sent to the video card. Try plugging in an external monitor and see what kind of image you get. If you get the same problem on an external monitor its almost certainly a video card fault. If it looks fine then the fault is in the built in LCD display. Maybe a broken wire or lose connection in the wire harness that goes to it.

hi alphanumeric,

I'm pretty sure that it's my LCD for these reasons:
1) My laptop doesn't have a video card (unfortunately). It houses a graphics chip instead;
2) My laptop is static, meaning I don't bring it around and it always remain in the same position, kinda like a desktop but with le space. Having said that, I feel there's no need to "close" my laptop like a clam shell;
3) Have tried plugging it to external monitor before, and the problem did not occur there, so this is definitely my laptop's LCD.

I say video card but I am referring to the video graphics chip. It is a video card of sorts, its just soldered to or built into the motherboard. Anyway, it does sound like its a problem in the laptops LCD display. That's a strange problem for an LCD though? Like TVeblen said, as you describe it, it's something you usually see on a CRT not an LCD. LCD's don't burn in like that?

Hmmm. What common problems are usually met by LCDs? Maybe that's what's actually happening to my screen? Something that is similar to CRT's screen burn?
Pls, enlighten me.