Annoying display problem

Just one of about a million niggly problems Im having with 7....

Using a Dell Optiplex 745. Windows used its own display driver when I installed it so I thought no problems. But its not right - if im doing something in a window I often get the taskbar or other windows flickering like an epileptics worst nightmare.

Also had the display black out the other day and a message saying the display driver had crashed and windows was reverting to a default or something. Resolution stayed the same though

Also theres a really annoying ghosting effect, sometimes it cant be seen but on pictures its especially bad. I suppose this could be a dodgy VGA cable but it was always ok on Xp so it seems unlikely.

The display adapter is listed as 'Intel Q965/Q963 Express Chipset Family (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM 1.0)'
Ive had a look on the intel website but as far as I could see theres no generic chipset drivers for it, and the 745 isnt officially supported by Dell on Windows 7 according to their website so theres no updated driver there.

The odd thing is, my colleague has an idential computer, yet hes not getting any of these problems. Ill have to look at what driver is being used on his.

Any ideas?

If this is in the full scale Aero theme, try setting it to Aero Basic (Windows 7 Basic) theme. See if you notice any changes.

Whats the moniter refresh rate set to and can it cope with it, if it has been detected wrong this could cause an issue. Also Aero uses the GPU vastly more than XP so some slightly dodgy shared memory or a fault that would not be obvious in XP may manifest in 7. As suggested above classic mode reverts to the old CPU driven GDI which may aleviate the issue, if it does it could well be hardware. Depending on the board memtest may be able to check the whole lot of the memory.

Ah ok Ill try Aero basic, I suppose it is a 4 year old integrated graphics card so isnt exactly the beefiest.

I did look at the refresh rates, that was my first thought too. It would only let me pick 60, 72 and 75 and the ghosting was pretty much the same with all of them

Ok changing to basic does seem to have stopped the flickering.

But im still getting the ghosting. Went to try refresh rates again, its now taken the option of 72 away from me, set it to 60, and setting it to 75 causes it to go all fuzzy and hurt my eyes - should be the other way round surely! Very strange

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sidewinder

Ok changing to basic does seem to have stopped the flickering.

But im still getting the ghosting. Went to try refresh rates again, its now taken the option of 72 away from me, set it to 60, and setting it to 75 causes it to go all fuzzy and hurt my eyes - should be the other way round surely! Very strange

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If it is an LCD 60hz is actually fine as it is only really CRTs that benifit headache wise from higher refresh rates.

It sounds like the moniter cable could be toast, if its a little fuzzy so long as the resolution is native to the screen it is almost certainly the cable. A new cable should solve it, of course it could be a good time to get a new GPU with a DVI port as going digital resolves this issue and helps with better colour representation :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sidewinder

Ok changing to basic does seem to have stopped the flickering.

But im still getting the ghosting. Went to try refresh rates again, its now taken the option of 72 away from me, set it to 60, and setting it to 75 causes it to go all fuzzy and hurt my eyes - should be the other way round surely! Very strange

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LCD should be 60, that will most likely be the native refresh rate, which is why it goes fuzzy when it's on the wrong one. Make sure it's also at the native resolution to stop blurring from scaling the image.

Sorted! I didnt actually realise, at some point I'd obviously linked 2 VGA leads rather than find a longer one when I moved my PC. Replaced with one, problem solved :o
Guess I cant really blame Windows 7 for that ;)

Forgot about refresh rates not affecting LCD's as well, fair point.

And yes, wish I did have DVI! Worst thing is, I think we bought our computers just a tiny bit too early - our computers are pretty much the only ones in the school not using DVI (since theres no port)