Monitor Mayhem

[Thoth093]

There's an older gentleman who goes to our church. Lately, his computer has been giving him fits, so I went over to look at it.

Here's what happens:

- The machine boots.

- He tries to click on any icon. Doesn't matter.

- Suddenly, the monitor begins turning itself on. And off. And on. And off. And ...

It does this until the machine is reset.

It started doing this after sitting idle when he was in the hospital for a couple of weeks, but it had worked perfectly before.

A few strange things: It will let him open Norton, including Antivirus, from a desktop icon. Anything else freaks it out, it seems -- including the START menu.

We did a scan (and his definitions are up to date) -- no viruses.

It will also let me look at his display properties. I tried various things including changing the power savings settings and whatnot. He was having some visual noise on his display. Changing the refresh rate fixed it, but he's not sure how the refresh rate changed by itself.

Any ideas? I can post more specific specs about what he has if need be. It's a generic Compaq with an AMD 3200 processor, 512k of RAM and on on-board video card. His monitor is a Viewsonic A91f+.

Thanks in advance!

Brian

 

[montag451]

If it works now, just leave it be.

Could've happened many different ways.
~Possibly user error

 

[Thoth093]

No, it's not fixed. It just doesn't freak out until you actually click on an icon (such as Internet Explorer). If you just sort of hang on the desktop and do a few things that, strangely enough, don't make it freak out -- like running a Norton scan, then it's fine. Norton was the only thing that we could click on that didn't freak it out.

 

[montag451]

Can you look in event viewer and see if there is anything that comes up sus?
Include Event ID, source and any text description if there is anything that you can't explain.

 

[Thoth093]

Still looking for some ideas.

Brian