Monitor Blur - Unknown Cause

[CounterAttack]

Hey all.

I've been having a bit of an issue with my monitor recently. Everything appears to be perfectly fine, except it's all... silhouetted, for lack of a better word. There's a faint duplicate image of things like my mouse cursor and the desktop background, a few pixels to the right of the original. Normally it's fine and I don't see the silhouette unless I look really close, although sometimes it's a lot more noticeable. It bugs me and I want to do something about it, but I don't know if there's anything I can do.

Look closely at the M symbol. See the semi-transparent line on the right, about five pixels to the right of the original? Now look even closer at the extra 't' in the word "Effect". That shouldn't be there.

I don't know why this is happening and I need some way to get rid of it.

Spoiler: Things that may help

Monitor: Chimei CMV 938A
Resolution: 1440x900
Graphics Card: Unknown. Don't ask 'cause I don't know.

Any help or ways to solve this problem will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[Nova5]

Things I'd check:
-Color settings
-Refresh rate (this can happen on some monitors if it isn't set right - yours probably should be 60Hz)
-Latest drivers for your graphics card (you can easily check which one you have [http://tinyurl.com/654t9zh])

If you let us know what kind of operating system you're running, we could point you to how to check/change those things if you dunno how.

 

[CounterAttack]

Colour quality: highest / 32bit
Refresh rate: 60Hz
OS: Windows XP 32bit

 

[Nova5]

Alright, probably your drivers then. What you'll need to do is right-click on "My Computer" and select "Manage" from the context menu that pops up. It'll open a window titled "Device Manager". There will be a list of different types of components, one of which will be "Display Adapters". This will tell you what variety of graphics card you've got.

If you're able to run Mass Effect without making your eyes bleed, chances are you've got either an nVidia or AMD/ATI* type graphics chipset. You'll still need the model number.

You can find nVidia drivers here. [http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us]

You can find AMD and ATI drivers here. [http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/integrated_xp-32.aspx]

On the off-chance that you've got an Intel integrated chipset or something, I can help pull the drivers for that if need be. On that note, you might want to consider upgrading to a newer, 64-bit version of Windows, as XP's only (functional) flavor was 32-bit, and far slower as a result.


[small]*Note: ATI has been owned by AMD for some time, and recently they dropped the 'ATI' brand altogether. You'll find ATI drivers exclusively on AMD's website, linked above.[/small]

 

[CounterAttack]

Hmmm... It turns out I'm using a Nvidia piece.

Hang on a bit. I went through this before when I had to update my drivers a while back. Mass Effect used to look pretty bad until I updated. Now it's okay but not without a few bugs.

Also, I checked to see if the silhouette is still here after playing a game. It's not, although it may crop up again in the future. I'll see if I can update my drivers to be on the safe side.

 

[Tharwen]

Do you have a spare cable lying around?

If you do, you could plug the monitor in with that to see if it makes a difference.

 

[inquisiti0n]

do you have an old monitor? i remember my old non-lcd monitor which had tons of useless features like the option to stretch the image which kinda gave an effect you're describing.

or try re-connecting the vga cable or watever you're using