How to get rid of horizontal lines on my monitor?

Faladu said:

Hi Robi, get this to check video card temps, it's been around a long time, and totally free:

GPU-Z Video card GPU Information Utility

No install just run the .exe from anywhere, once you download it, and it's small.

Go to the sensors tab (2nd tab) and you can hit the camera icon and save info to a file and cut and paste that here.

Was that system of yours overclocked to your knowledge? That's something that could make the video card act up and/or if anyone went into your BIOS and played with settings, that could do it. :huh:

With those symptoms , I would clean out that case of yours with a can of compressed air and q-tips (fans and heatsinks mostly, including video card and CPU) and reseat the video card in it's slot and make sure all the contacts on the card and the slot are clean/clear of debris, and make sure the PC power cable is unplugged before you start. (Really should be done, I say every 3 months, a lot of dust....)

Once that's done and back together, and if doesn't help, I'd be checking your Basic Input/Output System settings (probably referred to SETUP on your PC's first screen when it starts booting) that's usually reached by holding down specified key (usually DEL or F2), you are in the settings when a BLUE screen shows up, this is probably way over your head though and I'd suggest you phone a nerdy friend or relative to come over to assist.

From there you definitely require swapping out your video card for another, and if it does it with a 2nd card, you know it's the monitor, if it stops, you know it's the card.



^ I typed all that having not seen those pics, didn't notice the extra pages, yeah, into the case I would roam to clean that sucker out, then the swap out for another card.
I have a nice old PCI video card I use for testing, since it also allows eliminating trouble with the PCI-E or AGP slot as well.

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fseal said:

More than likely you have a broken solder ball problem.

In these days of lead free solder, solder has become much weaker and brittle and often prematurely breaks. Especially on electronics like graphics cards where they are heated to high temps and cooled off repeatedly.

So when your card reaches a certain temp, a chip or the circuit board itself warps slightly and a memory cell or the gpu loses contact with an address line or something and it fails. Then it cools off and remakes contact again.

Can't tell you how common this is. On boards where you can get at the chips, you can ususaly find the culprit by pressing down on the chip with a finger while it's running. Course graphics cards have the gpu and memory chips all under a giant headsink so that's probably not possible.

If you improve the cooling on your case the card may last for some time yet, even on warm days... But eventually it'll probably start doing it all the time with repeated heating/cooling cycles.

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