Windows SP2

[Beerknurd]

After installing Win SP2 has anyone noticed their moniter acting strange. My moniter has little flashes down the left and right sides of the screen.

Have yall ever seen in a commercial or a video when it shows a computer screen and the big white bars are going down the screen. Well that's what mine is doing, but with out the annoying lines. It just kinda pulsates all the way down the left and right side. When it gets to the bottom it starts at the top again...

Does anyone know how to fix this?????

I tried unplugging everything and reconnecting the moniter.....

I first realized this after installing SP2

[AMDave]

Sounds dodgy.

Our machines at work that now have SP2 on them do not exhibit that behaviour.

I would immediately investigate your video drivers and re-install them if necessary (personally I would do it anyway just to be on the safe side). Also check the website for the driver provider to make sure that there are not compatibility issues...they may have another driver update ready for your. Check your version # against theirs.

That is all that I can offer. I will tell the others about your problem so that they can look out for it too.

[Beerknurd]

I uninstalled SP2, it corrupted the registry somehow. I had to reformat my C: drive. That was about 4 o'clock this afternoon. It's now 11:21 pm and Everything is finally working perfectly. I'll take my risk getting a virus... I will never install SP2 again.....

[Empty_5oul]

tlking of that my dad had a monitor prob after installing SP2. He uses his comp all the time and it is the internet server and has run solidly for the past 4 years.
i put SOB n it and he thinks this caused his mon. probs but i believe it to be SP2. His screen would become unresponsive and sometimes you could only turn it on by turning the monitor off and back on again it wouldnt respond to mouse wiggling :S. Also sometimes programs would shake/wobble on the screen, it was a weird problem lol.
seems to be ok now though after another re-boot.

[Keith75]

Well, this weekend I got a 250 Gig. HD to replace my 120 Gig. and instead of migrating all the files to the new drive with the Maxtor program like I usually do I did it manually. I put in the new drive and installed XP Professional with SP2 on the machine and then copied my programs over. It seems to work perfectly and I am pretty happy. I did go in and turn of the firewall and some other warning features though.

Keith

[Beerknurd]

Turns out it wasn't SP2. I cleaned my hard drivve and started over yesterday. This morning it started doing it again. I'm calling Dell tomorrow and I will have them ship me a new monitor.

Could it be a bad surge protector maybe... Would it be worth buying a new one before I make Dell ship me a new monitor????

[vaughan]

Damage is probably already done. Get a decent UPS and plug everything in.

[AMDave]

I was intrigued by this so I caught up with a couple of the guys in IT.

They believe that the highest probability is h/ware. likely related to capacitors in the rastor controller depending on the age of your equipment.

Apparently capacitors used to be manufactured to a "longest" possible lifespan which in reality was about 3 to 5 years. As we know manufacturing processes used to be pretty robust (always err on the side of extreme caution). This is why there are so many old x86 motherboards around that still work. But in recent times the capacitor manufacturing processes have been refined (read cost optimised).

One of the problems of the old capacitors was that you could not see any evidence of the electrolyte expiring. This could have been dangerous in some cases. An ex-colleage of mine now works with a television camera maintenance crew and has explained to me that they now replace ALL capacitors on their equipment between 6 and 12 months (generally they have a lot of high voltage capacitors, though). He reminded me that you now see the "+" on top of the capacitors. The centre of the "+" expands outwards until electrolyte actually exudes from the crack. This is aparently a design for safety as it reduces the likely hood of an explosion of the capacitor which might result in an electrical fire when the electrolyte might explode out of the seal on the side of the capacitor onto other charged elements.

This reminded me that I have had a couple of boards at work exhibit spontaneous reboot problems (just like some viruses cause), but they turned out to be expired capacitors. (The tech pointed them out to me at the time but I did not understand what he was pointing out to me...I remember I was on the phone at the time). The lease company claimed that we must have experienced some power spikes to cause that to happen, but the technicians are adamant that that was Cr*p.

Lets cut a long story short... Capacitors are in almost everything electrical...they now have an expected lifespan of 2 to 3 years in general specification (down from 3 to 5) according to the boys in the know.

They gave a tip to check the build date of the equipment on the serial tag of any equipment before purchase so that you have an idea how lon the components have been "on the shelf", so to speak.

I sometimes get an "electrical" smell that seems to come from the back of my 17inch monitor. They said that it's not likely to be dust. The Man/f date on the serial tag is...Nov-2000. They said "Replace it !" No ifs or Buts. I am now checking off all of the rest of my equipment. I have built my own PCs for years but must admit that I have been letting the periferals ride for a long time.

PLEASE NOTE - they did not discount the possibility that an older driver might not function well with SP2, but said that it "should" have been covered off by MS & the vendors (but it would still pay to check their websites).

That's my lesson-learned this week. I hope that someone else may benefit from this.

If you have a similar lesson like this, please drop it into the "Hardware/hardeware" or "Windows/tips & tricks" Forum topics.

If you have read all the way to the bottom of this post, Thank you.

[Beerknurd]

Damn... we got another typer.... Can we call you BC just for fun....???

I wonder how BC is doing.... ??

[Ototero]

Dave, I read it to the end, very BCish.

It all seems very plausible. Electronics 10/15 years ago lasted ages, but now, 3 or 4 seems good. Luckily, I've nothing older than 2 years in the house.

When any computer breaks, it's easier to justify it to my wife that I need to upgrade