Strange constant flicker on LCD Monitor - help?!

I've been having this problem for a while now, and I really want to get to the bottom of it.

The flicker takes the form of narrow vertical shadows moving across the screen horizontally. It isn't particularly noticeable on lighter backgrounds, but on a darker screen, it's really distracting. I notice it most when play Minecraft (in dark areas) and at darker scenes during DVD playback.

I thought it might be that the monitor isn't getting enough power - there's my PC, an external HDD, surround sound speaker system and two lamps running off the same power supply - but I plugged it into a different supply, and still had the same problem.

One thing which might be causing it: the cable the monitor was supplied with is a European two-pin, rather than a UK three-pin, and I'm having to use an adaptor.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

I'm afraid I'm not much of a soldering hand! Do you think that's what it's likely to be? I'm sure the monitor is still under warranty, it's less than a year old.

You might give the video cables the 'wiggle test'. With everythign on wiggle the ends on the monitor and the PC to see if you have any reaction. If so wherever you get a reaction would be the culprit. i.e. monitor or GFX adapter.
If that checks out, try another monitor if possible or that one on a different PC.
The monitor may just be bad.

Qdos said:

I'd be tempted to first check the refresh rate and resolution are set properly, in case it's not a hardware fault.

Might be helpful if we knew what screen it is since your spec's list two models...

Okay! Checked refresh rate and resolution, that's okay. I've updated my spec so that it lists the model I'm talking about, the 23". :)

bassfisher6522 said:

I think Qdos has got the right idea there. To add to that, check the hardware accelerator in adobe. I just went through something similar and had to disable the hardware accelerator in adobe while watching youtube video but that was after I upgraded my GPU, that's when I started seeing the screen flicker. Worth checking.

Hardware accelerator... now, I'm afraid you're going to have to give me some pointers on that one, I'm not sure how to check that?

Britton30 said:

You might give the video cables the 'wiggle test'. With everythign on wiggle the ends on the monitor and the PC to see if you have any reaction. If so wherever you get a reaction would be the culprit. i.e. monitor or GFX adapter.
If that checks out, try another monitor if possible or that one on a different PC.
The monitor may just be bad.

I've done the old wiggle test, nothing showing up there. It's not flickering at the moment, as far as I can see, and wiggling doesn't change anything. I'll try and get it hooked up to my parent's PC at some point and see what happens there. :)

Do you see the issue on the monitors own internal On Screen Displays (OSD)? The menu for instance. If the monitors own menu displays correctly, then it is a video problem (source). It is unlikely to be bad caps, especially on a one year old monitor. The major cap problem was limited to an older production run (see Capacitor Plague).

In a television, a steady rate horizontal or vertical scrolling would point to a bad ground or video interference due to shielding issues. If you can connect the monitor to another PC, you can quickly determine if it is the monitor or the PC. I believe a horizontal scrolling would be less likely with a monitor failure.

A Guy

Just a guess, but when you mentioned playing games, I immediately thought of the video card not being large enough.