Thin Purple vertical line suddenly appeared?

Draeger · 2 Sep 2009 at 12:25

Hi folks,

Been away on holiday and came back yesterday. Switched on PC and everything was as per normal for the first 10 minutes or so. Then this thin purple vertical line appeared as shown below.

I switched off the PC and restarted it but it is still there. It shows up during the POST of the system and also in the BIOS screen. I'm guessing therefore that it is not a GPU issue but a problem with the 19" WS Octigen LCD I have?.

Is there any way to fix this?. Really strange as everything was working fine before I went on holiday and this is the first time I have seen the problem. Only thing I did differently was install a couple of Vista updates this morning but none of the updates as far as I can recall were anything related to visuals or display.

Draeger · 2 Sep 2009 at 14:23

Hmm. Strange.

I slid the monitor out from where it sits in a recess on my PC desk to check for the exact model number on the rear of it in case of a warranty claim ( Octigen warranty card in the original box which I still have says even without a proof of purchase the product is warrantied for 3 years from the manufacturing date ).

Anyway, slid the monitor out, noted the code and serial number and when I turned it around to slide it back in the line had vanished. :eek:

It's been fine for about an hour since. :confused:

alex24 · 2 Sep 2009 at 14:25

Are you connecting with DVI or VGA? Poor connections or bad cables can sometimes cause this on VGA, can't say I've experienced the same with DVI though.

Draeger · 2 Sep 2009 at 14:40

It's connected to the 9800GTX+ via a DVI to VGA adaptor thingy - the one that came in the box with it. The cable going to the monitor is its original VGA one.

If that makes sense?!!.

alex24 · 2 Sep 2009 at 14:58

Yeah makes sense. It could well be a poor connection or bad cable somewhere then. Does the monitor accept DVI and do you have a DVI cable? If yes, I'd use that instead, not least because it gives better picture quality, but should be more reliable in terms of signal degredation. That is, it'll work or it won't, as it's digital.

If it doesn't have DVI, just unplug all the cables and replug them a few times, make sure nothing is being forced on the route there and it should be ok.