Now this has had me bummed for the longest time....my only solution so far is to 'sit back far enough that I don't notice it'.  Luckily that's not TOO far away really, but it gets really bad up close.

SO here's the problem - I bought an external monitor for my laptop(its screen has a LOT of vertical lines going through it now), and even though it has pretty good stats(I'd say great, but I'm sure they're not by now), it just has this constant snow/static/noise going through it constantly.  It's ESPECIALLY noticeable on dark colors...I have a completely black MS-Paint file sitting on my desktop for the sole purpose of showing anyone just how bad it is, as well as being a constant for different tests I did.

Those tests are as follows:

My Laptop + LG Monitor

Old Computer + LG Monitor

Parent's Computer + LG Monitor

Brother's Laptop + LG Monitor

----AND----

My Laptop + Parents' Computer's Monitor

My Laptop + Old Computer's Monitor

My Laptop + My LCD-TV's VGA-input.


You can go ahead and attach a "WORKS FINE" to --every-- one of those EXCEPT for the combination of "My Laptop + LG Monitor".  It is the ONLY combination that doesn't work.....and that makes me wonder what the crap is going on.  Lemmie be more specific: this monitor works with EVERYTHING except this laptop, and my laptop works with every monitor I listed except for this monitor.  WHAT is the difference??  It annoys me because it's a GREAT monitor when hooked up to the other computers, has this sort of 'reach out and touch it' kind of clarity to it in every way, and in the same way, my laptop outputs perfect signals to the other monitors and my TV when I hook it up to them.  But together?  The clarity is lost because of the constant noise.  I'm HOPING this isn't going to adversely affect the monitor, like cause some sort of malfunction or ruin its life or anything.

I can't think of anything that'd be causing the noise EXCEPT maybe either the laptop itself, which I could almost see at this point.  Don't know why, but it's all I can think of.  Maybe the monitor is soooooo sensitive it's picking up some sort of noise that the other monitors did not have problems with.


Anyway, just throwing this out there just in case anyone here knows about this sort of thing, if there's anything to do for it, or mostly, just a reason WHY both parts work fine with other components except for each other.  -_-;;;;;


Link to an old post I made of this on TP: http://www.tokyopop.com/MAGNUS8M/photo/401343.html

(Yeah, here, mostly, when I ask a technical question, it's like saying 'dan....hey dan!' .. :p )

Well, that could almost be possible though.  This laptop gets hot, and I only got a cooling-fan-base for it back in March, and the first line appeared on the screen back in January this year.  I think the heat DID do it.... at around January I was home more often, so I had the laptop on and running, and when I would leave it, I'd close the screen down.....after I bought my monitor(when I had about three lines), I kept it closed all the time, but left it 'on'(in my graphics-card properties, I can opt to turn it off, as well as make the external the 'default' monitor).  After a while when I still kept the laptop screen 'on', I went back and looked at it, and I suddenly had like 8 or 10 lines....so to me, it kind of tells me that heat might have caused it on that monitor.

Before I go any farther....yeah, there are the 'cylinder' shapes on the cable which I would have to guess are the induction cores.  Also, ONE of those monitors(excluding the LCD TV) IS an old CRT.....but the other is an LCD as well, and I really don't remember seeing it there.  ALSO, I don't see the noise on the laptop's screen eith---well, going back and checking.....it's REALLY hard to tell, but I think I might actually see a little bit of noise actually.  The screen on the laptop kind of has a sort of gloss or glare to it, maybe that's why I never saw it(but I really don't remember seeing it on my parent's LCD-monitor, but maybe that was the same way).

Also, the noise on the monitor is almost in the same column/vertical like arrangement as the lines on the LCD screen.  Brother.

Hrm.  If my video card IS dying, and it's a laptop with integrated video-memory, my laptop's probably on its way out entirely.  -.-;;  Just got RAM for it like a year ago too....gah.  I'm not really in a position to be getting a new computer, but it almost seems like I need to....man.

Ack, yeah, it's an HP.  x_x;  I kinda figured a new comp would be cheaper than replacement parts....funny how that works.

As bad off as the laptop has been, I've been collecting parts unintentionally for a while anyway.  I wonder how cheap I can get a GOOD mini-tower: I've got the external monitor, keyboard, mice, harddrive and other 'essential' pieces....all I'd need is a good tower that's not too expensive.  I just know I'd get a lot of slack from parents, even tho' it's not THEIR money, but they'd hate to see me throw away an otherwise good machine.  I know -I- don't want to get rid of it, but man...if that dies, ugh.  I'd at least like to hope I could somehow rig a way to pull the info off of the laptop harddrive if the video/motherboard fails.  I guess I should start backing up important stuff, huh...

Unfortunately I've never built a PC before by myself...I mostly know the key components and all, but I have a bad feeling if I did it myself something would go wrong.

I priced some mini-towers over at Dell, and as I thought, even without including the things I already have, it'd still be over $1,000....so I'd love to build my own if I could.  I *did* look into the AMD 64 x2 chips, not sure if they're what I want.  I'm guessing that ... when it's a Dual Core and it lists the clock speed, that it's citing both cores?  Will it be as fast if the program that's running isn't optimized to use both cores, or use the 64-bit processing?  Do 32-bit applications/games run well enough(I'm assuming they would) on a 64-bit system?  Good grief, I could start a whole new topic on this if I wanted I'm sure.  I mostly ask because this laptop is a 2.8GHz Pentium-4 Hyperthreading(Windows usually sees it as two 2.80 and 2.79 GHz processors, but I'm sure it's just one)......so when I see that the highest performing AMD/Intel Core Duos are 'clocked less' than mine...yeh.  I'm sure that after two years though, it probably IS better, I'm just being careful at the moment I suppose.

*scribbles down some ideas for his own notes* Processor: "something", better than mine hopefully, Memory: 1~3GB, maybe 4GB if the total price isn't too high, Video: 128~256MB, HOWEVER, since my monitor has a DVI port I'd like for it to have that;;;; DVD+/-RW Drive, Built-in Memory Card Reader, Integrated WiFi(or a card).  Hrm.  I think it might be a long while before I can get the capital together to get any of it tho'...ahh well.

Anyway, thanks for the help!  There's one more trick I might mess with...just taking out some of the RAM I put in since the problem did come a month or so after I did that, but I doubt that'd reverse anything really...