My video card or my monitor?

[harpomx]

I have always noticed that, while playing games or whatever, my screen was always so much darker than anyone else's, even when I turn the contrast & brightness way up. But now I'm getting even worse problems. Every time I boot up my computer, or even wake it up from power save mode, the horizontal and vertical settings are messed. right now, I have it so the horizontal size is all the way down to 0, and I still can't see all of the start button, or the systray. It also goes way out of whack whenever I change the resolution or refresh rate. Right now I have it on 1124x720 or whatever and a refresh around 85.

So do you think it's the monitor or the card? I have a TNT2 Asus card and a Viewsonic monitor, pretty up-to-date drivers on each. I've only had the monitor for 2 years. I bought the video card 3 years ago, but have only been using it since I got the new monitor. Getting a new geforce 2 or 3 won't be much of a problem, but that monitor's a 19" and I don't feel like replacing it right now.

 

[DaiShan]

Honestly to me, it sounds like your monitor, but that is just my gut feeling, an easy way to test: Swap monitors, if it goes away, you have found the problem, if it persists swap out video cards with a known working one, if that does the trick then you have found your culprit. If neither of those works, then you have another problem which has saved you the time and money if you upgraded the wrong component.