Infrequent distorted monitor problem!

Every now and then, my monitor suddenly becomes completely jumbled up with random pixels. For the past few months, it has been happening during the first few seconds of booting into WinXP, however not everytime - in fact far from it, it's usually only a couple of times a month if that! Because of this, I never thought much of it. Yesterday though, I was playing around with some large audio files in Cool Edit Pro, when suddenly it happened out of nowhere... this has lead me to think it could be a RAM problem as obviously large audio files in Cool Edit Pro will be RAM intensive. The problem is, when it happens there is nothing I can do - the whole system is seemingly locked up (I can't see anything on the screen either!) so much so that a soft boot doesn't cure the problem, it reboots the PC but the monitor is distorted from the very first BIOS screen onwards. The only way to cure it is to turn the PC off at the mains, which is completely undesirable.

I have uploaded a photo of the monitor when it happens:

http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/merkin/Picture-004.jpg

The darker square is where the mouse pointer was.

Do you think it's most likely RAM? I have 2 x 256mb 2700 DDR-RAM. Or maybe onboard RAM on my gfx card?

Any help appreciated!
Merkin51

 

Could be your Power Supply has become faulty. Or it's receiving dirty current.

When this happens, when you turn off the machine pull the plug from the PSU for a few minutes then plug it in back. See if that works.

 

Also download Memtest rom the limk below and run it to check your memory.

http://www.memtest86.com/

 

The first thing anyone should try for this issue is

right on the monitor, if you have these options,

- DEGAUSS
- RECALL

This solves the distortion issues, in most of the cases,

Good Luck,
From:Michael Sachin
[email protected]