My brother moved in again so this was bound to happen. I leave home, the computer is perfectly fine, then I come back and the computer is completely fucked up. The screen is wiggling/shaking. When I press buttons on my monitor, however, the little box that comes up that lets me adjust contrast and whatnot is perfectly fine.

I've restarted my computer, done virus tests, and, obviously, redone all the cables to the monitor. It's still as fucked as ever. It seems to fluctuate between slightly wiggly to I CAN'T FUCKING READ WHAT I'M TYPING wiggly.

Any thoughts? I can't play starcraft with this shit going on.

EDIT: I just noticed that the left side of the screen is more fucky than the right.

Have you tried plugging another monitor in to see if maybe that helps?

I don't have another one, but I'll take it to lamp's house and check tonight.

I would definitely recommend degaussing the monitor if it's a CRT. If it's an LCD it may be gone... but if it's a CRT this definitely sounds like it got magnet'd somehow.

Should be a Degauss selection on your monitor or in that little menu that pops up.

just throw the monitor at your brother.

it's not the monitor, she hooked up different monitors to it and it's the same thing

Hold your brother at gunpoint and force him to tell you step by step what he did on the computer?

I can't find my brother, I haven't seen him for a few days. I think I'm going to reformat. My computer was reformatted a month or two ago so I don't have anything I really need on here anyway besides some codecs.

I just noticed that it's every line and outline (even in pictures), that is wiggling, not really the entire screen. The left side is now worse than the right.

Okay I reformatted it. And now it's worse. So I guess something is physically wrong, then. Anyone know what it could be?

Something with the graphics card maybe?

Did you use the same cable connecting the monitors to the PC? If you did, it might be that, or there's something physically wrong with the graphics card.

We did, but I know there's absolutely nothing wrong with the monitor. When I was doing system restore and selecting options for reformatting, it was perfectly fine. My system is backed up on a different drive, and all the files having anything to do with reformatting and system restore are on that drive.

It's way worse now. I'm not actually sure what I'm typing anymore.

I'm thinking something is wrong with the drivers or graphics card. But after seeing the reformat options screen being PERFECTLY FUCKING FINE, maybe it's the hard drive?

Either way it's NNOOOOTTT THE MONITORRRRRR.

It must be either the hard drive or the motherboard at this point. I remember (and some of you may as well) when my computer would shut down after about 10 minutes running normally, but would run fine in Safe Boot. Actually I guess that's not the greatest example, but at least that means it's probably the hard drive and NOT the motherboard.

If at all possible you should try plugging the hard drive into a different computer and see if the other computer can boot up to it and run fine. If that works then it's probably your motherboard that's borked. But if that doesn't work then it's the hard drive.

I'll try that when I have some time, hopefully tomorrow.

New symptom:

When the computer goes into system standby, it completely disconnects from the monitor. The monitor light blinks on and off as if there wasn't a computer attached to it at all. The only way to reconnect it is to restart it forcefully. I have to turn the power bar off, just pressing and holding the off button on the tower doesn't work because as soon as it turns off it immediately turns back on, but still isn't connected to the monitor. Also, when it disconnects from the monitor, it makes that 'running' sound that it does when I'm starting up a large program, the computer, or a CD. What's weird (besides the sound coming on when NOTHING is being loaded) is that the sound doesn't stop like it usually does after a few seconds. It's continuous, and probably lasts from when it goes into system standby to the time when I restart it.

Changing the refresh rate to 70 Herts from 60 made it possible for me to read text, but changing it to 75 herts makes it horrible. The first time it crashed the computer.

Um I know very little about computers, but the first thing I would do is use a different cable for any display issues, they get fucked super easy, especially when you're hooking up and unhooking your computer like every weekend.

Which is why I was talking about the CABLE and not the MONITOR.

I tried hooking up cheamo's monitor to my computer using cheamo's cables and the monitor wouldn't connect.

It's getting super difficult to start up my computer. I had to turn it off from the power bar 4 times before it actually started up.

...back up your data and get a new one?

I don't have any data, I reformatted. Everything is gone so it doesn't even matter.

I wouldn't mind getting a new one, but I have to pay for plates at the end of the month, and then christmas is coming so I have to save up money for presents. Plus my parents are going to give me $500 for a laptop so I need to save money to pay for the rest of the price.

I'll talk to my mom and maybe she can pay for a new one and I'll just pay her back in january. But if I just need to get a new graphics card or something, I probably won't buy a new computer because I'll be getting a laptop so there's just not much point.

Ever thought of maybe just taking it into a PC repair place/shop/something?

If you can hold off till next weekend, i might be sober enough to remember to fix it at PJ's or something.

Well it's probably the video card, so I'd rather just pay for a video card instead of a video card + labor.

Yeah and those things are so easy to install anyway. Just a waste of money to take it ot a technician.

I was kinda referring to just finding out what was wrong with the thing...would be a lot of cash to spend if it wasn't the graphics card (though it probably is...but I'm just saying).

oh no I wouldn't buy a graphics card if I didn't know that's what was wrong, that's why andrew is going to bring a graphics card (I think) and test it on my computer.

I can't believe I'm the first to suggest this but update your drivers. 9/10 that's all the problem is.

already tried and if she formatted it, that would have cleared up the problem when she went and installed the latest drivers.

>_> It's the perfect reason to go bug your parents about getting you a new PC.

I fucking hate this piece of shit. I'm about ready to throw it out. I have to turn it on and off 10 times before it actually starts up, and when it does it randomly restarts itself shortly after everything loads. I've tried so fucking hard to install v2.0.50727 but just as it gets close it disconnects my mouse and keyboard, then freezes. I mean actually disconnect too, because my mouse laser turns off. This piece of shit file is like half installed.

Computer is severely broken now. It will not start up. Period. 9/10 times the fan comes on very loudly but nothing loads, and now when the fan doesn't go nuts and it seems like it will load up, it doesn't. So my computer does not start up anymore. It's busted. I'm going to try to get her to buy me a laptop sooner than christmas because I don't think I could last without a computer for a month.

I fixed my old computer by... buying a new one. heh. It's vista though so it sucks. What the fuck is all this shit on my taskbar jesus christ. And I got a new video card for it. A GeForce 8800 GT, and a better power supply because the one that came with this computer can't handle the graphics card.

Just gotta disable everything, then Vista is sweet.

And frankly, I'm jealous :(

And I'll lend you Windows XP Corporate if you want to dual boot XP. Cause that's what I do.

XP and Vista that is.

Why do people bitch so much about vista, I mean yeah vista blows ass and cock and all the other expletive deleted's out there but seriously, is it that hard to pop in an XP SP2 disc and format the fucker?

Yes

Or you could just turn off all the features Vista has, if you're too ignorant to reformat and put XP on then you're too ignorant to know the difference between XP and Vista with features off.

I don't have a windows xp disk, but windows xp sucks too. Windows 98 is still my favorite. The search function actually, you know, found stuff. And I didn't have to go into classic mode to change things because it wasn't sorted into retarded categories. When I right click my desktop it's sorted into a million things. It's really only annoying I guess, though.

Those little warnings in vista that pop up are really tolerable. Maybe because I'm used to norton anti-virus, though. Either way 98 rules because I had 11 trojans on my old computer that protected it from the really bad stuff because after I got rid of them I got this bug on my computer that made me reformat every 3 weeks.

uh... yeah

Windows 98??? Jeeze, you got a good 10 years out of it then, nearly. Be proud.

Windows 2000 is still my fave. NT for the win!

KNOPPIX FTW! How can you beat a live DVD with a bruteforcer burnt to the same disk.

Wait what? Brute Force? Like that game for original XBox?