Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello,

About six months ago when I turned my monitor on I noticed a solid black line, one pixel wide, over on the right hand side of the screen. This disappeared after it had been on for about five minutes.

Since then it's gradually got worse, every week or two or three, an extra line will appear, always adjacent to one of the other lines, and the time it will take for all the lines to disappear will increase slightly.

As you can see from the pics below, 'THE BAR OF DOOM' is really quite wide when I turn the screen on now, and is comprised of various colours.

This BAR OF DOOM will slowly disappear over the next 30 minutes or so, one pixel column at a time - and when they've all disappeared the screen will be as good as new for the rest of the session.

And then tomorrow when I turn it on, THE BAR OF DOOM will be back again.

It's kind of bugging me but not enough to cause me to abandon the screen, but I am perplexed as to what could be causing such a slow, incremental failure.

Any ideas? (And it is there irrespective of source input, by the way.)

Much thanks.

EDIT - It's a three and a half year old Dell UltraSharp 2408WFP 24", so it's not done too bad considering the hours of use I've had out of it.

I think it's fucked.

Just for comparison, this is what it looks like after it's been on for 15 minutes, and in another 15 minutes they'll be gone completely.

Yeah, it's fucked. My iMac screen is going the same way.

But I want to understand the SCIENCE behind it.

How long can it carry on like this, how bad can it get? What component is failing in what way to cause such an odd symptom?

I figured there would be super-smart minds here who would just say 'Yeah it's the sprazzlesocket wrench converter', or something.

I don't know what the cause is, but it's not the sprazzlesocket wrench converter.

My guess would be it's a growing number of pins in the flat ribbon connector that carries the data signal making poor contact, and as they warm up, they expand just enough to make good contact again. If I'm right, the amount of time it takes for the effect to disappear will vary based on room temperature.

It's the chip-on-glass display driver on the edge of the LCD panel itself. The conductive paths in one spot becoming fractured due to heat cycling. You'll probably find it spreads to a certain width and stops, but becomes a permanently black or white stripe.

You are absolutely correct Dr G, I was going to include that in my original post but it was already over-long and stupefyingly boring.

It's definitely got better since the weather has warmed up a bit, or if the central heating was on over winter it wouldn't last as long etc.

What's your long term prognosis then?

To be quite honest I wouldn't be entirely sad if it died completely as I'd finally have the perfect excuse to upgrade to a 27 inch 2560x1440 screen.

'I had no choice dearest! The old one broke! Oh and also I need a new graphics card as my old one can't power games on this screen at its native resolution.'

Maybe I should just tip a glass of wine down the back of it and get it over with.

Might help if you pre-heat it in the oven

Harsh

I like the episode where Barney holds up his number at the Superbowl.

Wait! Wrong thread...

Get some Spy hunter decals

Jeez, I thought that said "What's the matter with my mother" at first. I was ready for a really sad, somewhat awkwardly phrased thread.

I thought it was about sick lizards.

Actually, I thought it was about a warship, normally small in size and with limited armour but with a single large gun that was often used for coastal bombardment, that had fallen into a poor state of repair.

Actually I thought it was about the 5th track on the Siouxsie & The Banshees Album, Juju, having playback issues.

I thought the poor chap was having trouble with his eyepiece, what what?

I thought it was about a type of speaker. Well, he did ask for feedback.

I thought it was about his computer monitor, and he was looking for advice as to what was wrong with it.

If that's the problem, than it sounds like disconnecting the connector and spraying some switch cleaner on both sides should sort it.

Sadly, that is not the problem

Could it be the sprazzlesocket wrench converter?

Thank you very much for all your kind assistance!

Overall I think Zardoz made the most amusing comment and therefore wins this monitor when it finally breaks completely.

Personally I think Zardoz should be deducted points for the scatter gun approach.

Saying that the Spy Hunter photo edit was made of win.

Yeah!

Push the upgrade with your wife, this will not get better and you will have a hard time finding a repair.

Its just bad luck with these, My Dell and Plamsa have never given me any issues and are both getting on

Other people I know have had to replace the same sorts of model much earlier.