Solved Fonts look smudged/shadow trailing a little

[dorian hawkmoon]

I was happy and playing Alan Wake, after quitting to desktop, suddenly nowhere out of the blue my fonts and icons look smudged/shadow trailing behind them (ie. shadow of 't just beside 't' if you add text effects in photoshop) a little, I didn't notice something strange like that earlier...I've uninstalled the latest catalyst driver and rolled back to the previous. No show, same thing's happening. Whats up ?!

 

[Maguscreed]

You may want to try walking through the text setup on your system.
right click the desktop go to personalize then click the display link at the bottom left.
after that you'll see a link about cleartype. Run through that process and see if it helps.
I'm saying all this assuming you restarted your system during the driver change.
If not I would just suggest restarting first.

 

[dorian hawkmoon]

I did that, but the shadow issue remains ( I also restarted)

 

[Maguscreed]

have you tried disabling the shadows then toggling them back on in the advanced system properties?
This is an odd one. I've actually had this problem before myself, generally restarting it has fixed it. A game should not be making changes to windows system settings like this.

 

[dorian hawkmoon]

yes, tried that. Only turns off shadows of window and stuff, not fonts ... can this be a fault of the gfx or lcd- never heard anything like this though if a gfx goes bad!!

 

[Maguscreed]

Well if it is something in the graphics driver sweeper is probably the only thing that will wipe out the current graphics installation enough to be sure of that. (the catalyst installer does a pretty poor job)
http://phyxion.net/Driver-Sweeper/Driver-Sweeper/Version-3-2-0/
obviously we're only focusing on the display drivers. Don't remove anything else, it can be a major pain.
...also works best in safe mode. (install in normal mode)

 

[dorian hawkmoon]

erm, I did that, but even that didn't solve the prob. I took out my gfx card & dusted it very lightly with a soft paintbrush, turned the psu swith to 'off', and securely seated the gfx & its power 6pin. And I don't know if I'm a little dazed by this strange ordeal... but the fonts and icons seem OK this time :sarc:! Of course, it maybe just my subconscious trying to console me !

 

[Maguscreed]

Or the process of finally completely shutting down the system to a zero power level finally let whatever the game messed with reset.

 

[dorian hawkmoon]

Or the process of finally completely shutting down the system to a zero power level finally let whatever the game messed with reset.

Yes, that is definitely a good explanation for this kooky problem!

 

[dorian hawkmoon]

Same thing happened again today.Ghosting? Exact same problem as in this forum http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/52222-3-weird-shadow-smudge-problem-viewsonic

I switched off smps (didn't work thrice) then disconnected the cable connecting LCD to graphics card, voila the problem disappeared again. Anyone think this may have to do with a faulty graphics card? Or can it be the monitor/cable?

 

[UsernameIssues]

.........Anyone think this may have to do with a faulty graphics card?..........

Probably. Sounds like latchup.

.........Or can it be the monitor/cable?

Will the cable mate with the video connector on your motherboard? If so, try using that video for a while and see if the problem happens.

 

[dorian hawkmoon]

Well, the problem comes up with steady use of say, 1 or 2 weeks. Actually, after I disconnected and reconnected the VGA cable the problem went away immediately, rather than switching off smps which didn't work thrice. What is the long term effect of latchup?

 

[UsernameIssues]

Latchup conditions can repeat forever without harming the chip or they might fry the chip.

Have you tried the video output that is built into your motherboard?

 

[dorian hawkmoon]

no not yet, have to uninstall driver and won't be able to play any games (this problem occurs suddenly, once in several weeks maybe)...does latchups occur to gfx, is that a regular occurrence?

 

[UsernameIssues]

Latchup can occur in most any integrated circuit. It is nearly always impacted by temperature... in other words, hotter = easier to put it into a latchup state.

 

[dorian hawkmoon]

Okay. That's a worrying thought, specially as recent games tend to overtax the gfx, even without overclocking (which I don't!) All the icons and texts looks like that the 'Drop Shadow' effect of Photoshop has been applied to those and they seem blurry, when the problem occurs.
The games are running fine, though. This is bugging me to the extreme! Which do I change, monitor or gfx, both would be really costly for me to pull off at the moment

 

[dorian hawkmoon]

Anyone with any insights? Cost of pc components have increased greatly this month in national budget, need to make a snap decision!

 

[UsernameIssues]

I cannot be sure w/o you spending hours playing whatever games you can using the video built into the motherboard. Or borrow a monitor and play your regular games. Or take you monitor to another computer and test it on games.

If you buy both a new monitor and a new gfx card and it turns out to have been the old gfx card that was bad, you now have a dual monitor system.

 

[dorian hawkmoon]

Took a gamble...changed display, lets see. hope to god it was the lcd which was messed up! Will report if the issue reappears again. if so, it'll definitely be the gfx

 

[kaianna]

I had the same problem with the fonts looking smudged and was wondering what was going on! I simply unplugged the power from the monitor and it disappeared when I plugged it back in. Who knew it would be that simple?