[angeltherat]

i have a samsung syncmaster 932bw for my dell dimension 8200 (win xp)
until yesterday, it worked perfectly. then when i went to my computer after a nap, and it came off the screen saver, the monitor said "auto-adjusting" and suddenly parts of the screen went offscreen. it took me a while to figure out what happend but i finally did.

when my display is set to the recommended 1440x900 resolution, my computer thinks the aspect ratio is 16:9 instead of the actual 16:10. i have to set the vertical screen centering as low as it can go just to see the toolbar at the bottom, but then i lose the top of the screen. the arrow even dissappears off screen and can click on the offscreen folders. plus not even clear type can make the words look clear. i feel like i am using someone else's glasses while looking at the screen. when i lower the resolution, it still looks fuzzy but the whole screen shows up, bottom toolbar and top of screen folders.

i have downloaded all the latest drivers i can find for the monitor, the computer, the hardware, the software, and the graphics card. btw, the craphics card is a GeForce3 Ti500 + tv out. ( i think that is what it is...).

has this happened to anyone else? is my graphics card giving out? is this the excuse i have been lookng for to get a new graphics card? or is something in the registry telling the monitor to do this?

oh, and the monitor is probably less than a year old.

[BG-0]

Was the "auto-adjusting" message a Windows box, or a irrelevant box (made by display, lookin like the menus of the display)?

[angeltherat]

i think it was a monitor display adjusting window. it didn't have a "windows" look to it at all.

[BG-0]

Then the display adjusted the aspect ratio. The display might "think" it's receiving signal in 16:9 ratio, or then it might actually receive signal in 16:9. I found no easy access options to solve this, maybe some of the pros can lend you a hand.

[angeltherat]

thanks for trying. i actually ordered a new video card a couple of days ago so it should be arriving today or tomorrow. this was just the final straw to push me to getting a new one (a loooong time coming). the new card will let me make the move to digital display instead of analog. if this doesn't fix it, i guess i will have to take the monitor in for repair (gasp!).

oh, and if you want an idea of the distortion i am looking at, all my w's look like v's because the pixels are sort of disappearing on half the w's

[BG-0]

Try this, propably won't help a bit, but giving a shot to it won't do any harm... http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypeInfo.mspx

[angeltherat]

already tried it. clear type barely helped at all. definitely still not what it was two days ago. thanks for the thought tho.

[angeltherat]

ok, i finaly got it figured out. i don't know why it wouldn't make a difference up until a few days ago, but the problem was the cable. i had been using a vga cable and it really didn't matter, because the graphics were pretty much just like digital, but suddenly a few days ago, it is like someone told my monitor "you can't have good graphics on analog" and it believed them. today i finally found a store that sold the DVI cable (a task much harder than it should have been) and when i plugged it in and restarted the computer, i actually got my 'clear as a bell' graphics back.

go figure.