[GeneB]

This is kind of an odd problem and I'm completely at a loss on what to make of it. My daughter has a 17" LCD ViewSonic monitor (about two years old) on her WinXP computer. A few months ago it started acting strange when the computer was started. On startup you could only see half the screen. The POST screen was displayed, but you could only see the bottom half of it--and that was all on the top half of the monitor--the bottom half was black. And when Windows loaded, the splash screen was displayed the same way--only the bottom half showed, and that was all pushed up to the top half of the screen. (It's as if the display is printed on a window shade that's rolled halfway up.) After Windows loaded everything was fine and the display was normal.

I figured it was probably a driver issue, so I updated the graphics and monitor drivers but that didn't fix the problem. Since everything else worked OK, we didn't worry about it any more.

But then last week she got a (relatively) new computer, hooked it up, and the same boot-up display problem was there. Still not a big deal, except she installed some programs for her 4-year-old (something from a Jumpstart Learning series) and those programs show the same problem--you can only see the bottom half of the display and the bottom of the screen is black. All other programs run and display normally, and there's no problem at all with a different monitor hooked up.

So it must be a monitor problem, right? But why does this half-screen goofiness only show up at boot and with a couple of not-very-sophisticated programs? Everything else is fine. Am I missing something?

[johnpost]

it seems to be happening at certain resolutions such as are used
during post screen, splash and those programs.

alot of kid educational software changes the video output
resolution to run

if new computer means new video card or on board
video then the computer output is not the problem.

your monitor would be suspect.

go through the monitor setup, the setup on itself
that doesn't use the computer, see if it has
a reset, see if it has diagnostics to test it out.

[Triple6]

3 Year Viewsonic warranty: http://www.viewsonic.com/support/warranty.htm

[Rich-M]

AS we seem to be concluding that kind of response is usually the monitor.

[JohnWill]

You may find that there are adjustments in the setup for phasing or some similar term. There is also frequently an auto-adjust setting. Try those and see if it doesn't resolve it.

If not, it may be the monitor is dying.