Monitor started flickering. :(

[dennilfloss]

My BenQ FP241W 24" LCD monitor suddenly started flickering a couple of minutes ago. The brightness varies slightly now but it's noticeable. I can't be sure if there is no lateral movement (might be imagining this). That monitor is a replacement unit I got on February 28th 2007 in lieu of one I had bought on Feb. 3rd but which had some dead pixels (I had a no dead pixel warranty). So it's only 4 years old.

The video card to which it is hooked is a Diamond Radeon 4870 1GB I bought on Sept. 19th 2008. So it's only 2 years old.

Now I do not have another computer on which to link the monitor, or another monitor to link to my desktop to see if the videocard is faulty instead. All I have is my IBM Thinkpad A21E laptop and the connectors behind it are not compatible with my monitor. I also presume its meager vidcard could never power a 1920x1200 resolution.

How do I determine which component is at fault? There must be software way of testing the videocard, right?

I'm gonna dust my case right now just in case that it's simply caused by a dust builtup.

BTW, the flickering seems to have stopped for the moment after ~15 mkinutes but I presume it will come back.

 

[dennilfloss]

OK. Gonna connect it to my old A21e laptop via VGA cable the next time it flickers if that lasts long enough. It did it again but that lasted less than a minute. Not long enough to catch it in the act on the laptop (takes longer for that Celeron 600 laptop to boot up).

This was a very good quality monitor back then and I've kept the brightness no too high to make the display last longer. ~13h per day for 4 years means ~19000h. The life expectancy of the backlight is supposed to be 50,000h.

http://reviews.cnet.com/lcd-monitors/benq-fp241w-lcd-display/1707-3174_7-32547367.html

 

[dmoney1980]

does it flicker on startup ? I have a 6 year old Samsung monitor that flickers for about 45 secs on startup or if I leave the pc on and it turns off and goes "cold" for a while.

 

[1h4x4s3x]

I too had the startup flickering issue. It got worse week by week. At the end it wouldn't stop flickering anymore. Other than sharing this great story I'm of no help. :biggrin:

 

[dennilfloss]

Not on startup. Just randomly. Done it twice so far (I know, not much of a sample on which to decide random). It doesn't last long so far. One thing I have done is to up my brightness from 30 to 36. Left the contrast at 50 though. If it doesn't do it more than this and only rarely, I can live with it. Afterall, I've learned to ignore the slight burn-in that occurred even with a screensaver.

 

[Concillian]

Most likely a problem with the ballast in the ccfl backlight. generally not user replaceable, and when it starts happening, your monitor is essentially done.

If it is a ballast issue, it will get worse over time and eventually fail completely.