Windows 7 - Visual Artifacts / Glitch

[gleofrocga]

2 days ago I down graded my Nvidia Drivers to the 337.88 version, via downloading the driver setup from the Nvidia Site. yesterday I installed malwarebytes, and left it do a full scan and I was aware from the PC for around 2 hours.

I come back, and I notice a slight blue tint on chrome, odd discolouring on explorer windows and on my Steam Client, jagged blueish lines. Bewildered, I just shutdown steam, and slightly tugged the DVI twisty knobs (sorry if thats the wrong word) and I noticed everything seemed to be normal here is an example of the dicolouring of explorer:

http://i.stack.imgur.com/NjD8X.png

wait, what artifacts? Yes, I can't see them either, however I am 100% sure when I created the file (prtscr) and put it into the paint, the artifacts were there, so I can probably confirm there is some hardware stuff going on here. Chrome isn't tinted either in this photo. Note in the above image, that was the second time it happened. Same deal, I ran the full scan of malwarebytes with steam running, I come back, I closed steam (however I didn't tug any wires) and then it just went back to normal. Now, here is a photo I took with my tablet, showing strange artifacts on steam

http://i.stack.imgur.com/e2cwM.jpg

I reinstalled the new drivers and it still happens. If I turn the montior off and come back after a while, the strange graphics occur. I found this in the " view reliability history ".

"Driver Management concluded the process to install driver FileRepository\monitor.inf_amd64_neutral_ab477c4d805d044f\monitor.inf for Device Instance ID DISPLAY\NVD0000\5&52452A9&0&UID1048832 with the following status: 0x0."

What is this? is this possibly because I unplugged the monitor and plugged it back in? is the cause of the issue? I can't find any solution and I really need help.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

You gonna have to do better; I don't see anything wrong.
If u seeing it on your end, I'd suspect the GPU got too hot.
Nothing wrong in those screenshots bud.

[gleofrocga]

Yes, the first image is fine - So I suspect a hardware issue if its not actually coming up in prtscr

The second image has this odd blue horizontal lines, and this appears on multiple programs.

Sorry if my photography is pretty amateurish, but I definately see strange jagged blue lines. They are not fixated in the same spot.

e.g on the stean client at the top there was a darkish blue jagged line, and when I prtscr'd and put it in paint, if I moved the image around it went around with the steam window. then, after a minute it stopped, and even the prtscr image showed no sign.

is it possible my DVI cable has some fault? ill try a vga tommorrow and see if it has any difference, for now im going to try a full uninstall of the drivers.

EDIT the blue you see in the the second image is not there all the time, that is part of the issue.

[chiefputsa☒lag]

to rule out failing monitor and/or video cable, re-seat current video cable or insert it to another port if possible (hdmi,vga, dvi) or use another video cable.

if the video cable is confirmed to be the problem, the fix is easy. if not, continue troubleshooting to rule out failing monitor or gpu card.

imo, that artifact you saw may have resulted from loose video cable.

[Hølland601]

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:

You gonna have to do better; I don't see anything wrong.
If u seeing it on your end, I'd suspect the GPU got too hot.
Nothing wrong in those screenshots bud.

actually the seccond one i could see the artifacting but the first one looked fine

[gleofrocga]

I have turned around the cable, (put monitor end in gpu end and vice versa)

I have tightly reseated it. I'm going to leave the PC again and turn the monitor off. I don't see these artifacts happen if I am using the PC, it seems to happen when I come back from the monitor being turned off.

I found the Event log message came about as I reseated the DVI, so that seems fine.

[gleofrocga]

Originally posted by Hølland601:

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:

You gonna have to do better; I don't see anything wrong.
If u seeing it on your end, I'd suspect the GPU got too hot.
Nothing wrong in those screenshots bud.

actually the seccond one i could see the artifacting but the first one looked fine

Yes the first image was prtscr so I'm sure its some sure it's hardware related. I'm not sure if drivers would change anything, but I'm going to try to do a complete uninstall tommorrow.

[chiefputsa☒lag]

btw, do you have any extra video cable to help you troubleshoot? (pr borrow from friends/neighbor?)

[gleofrocga]

Originally posted by chiefputsa:

btw, do you have any extra video cable to help you troubleshoot? (pr borrow from friends/neighbor?)

I have a VGA cable with a DVI extension (my GPU only takes DVIs). I'll trouble shoot it tommorrow since I'll probably set something on fire. (it's 2:40am)

[Azza ☠]

Don't use VGA/DVI adapters, they give you lower quality than your graphics card can actually produce and they tend to break over time. You will most likely find that's your problem.

When a monitor get colour tint (red, blue or green), it's a normally the monitor dying, but can also be a damaged cable or fault in the graphics card. Hopefully it's a damaged cable or that adapter.

Replace them one at a time, getting rid of that adapter if possible.

It might be a sign it's time to get a quality gaming monitor, specially if it currently doesn't support DVI or HDMI (1080p) you will be surprised by the difference and your eyes will thank you if you do long hours.

[gleofrocga]

Yeah, it's only a HP monitor, DVI/VGA only.

It's not just a tint, but also e.g in the desktop seems to have this 16 bit/colour degrading (I honestly don't know the term, it looks sort of fragmented, or added noise.

best example is if you search on google images, 256 colours. If you search through, some images show that "bleaching"

On top of that, Steam for example, some parts of the client were this torquise colour, and the log in had some strange jagged lines.

I'm going to test this monitor and cable on another PC, and if the issues persist there I can confirm its either the cable or monitor.

[gleofrocga]

I've just tested on another PC. It happened again, so I tested a different cable (VGA with a DVI converter since the GPU on that PC only has DVI slots also).

And, it happened again. So Is the monitor dying on me? is there anyway to fix it?

[UberFiend]

I think if the monitor was dying you wouldn't get neat, multi-coloured, horizontal lines. I think it's either the graphic card dying or an issue with the drivers.

When you uninstall them reboot & run ccleaner through the registry to get rid of any loose ends. Reboot again & reinstall the latest driver from nvidia's website. And reboot.

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download/standard

[gleofrocga]

Originally posted by UberFiend:

I think if the monitor was dying you wouldn't get neat, multi-coloured, horizontal lines. I think it's either the graphic card dying or an issue with the drivers.

When you uninstall them reboot & run ccleaner through the registry to get rid of any loose ends. Reboot again & reinstall the latest driver from nvidia's website. And reboot.

But it's happened on 2 systems,

one with a really old Geforce 405, and one with my GTX 660. I also tested a VGA cable.

I'll try to reinstall my drivers, but I'd rather do it manually. Would you know the complete steps (i dont want to use CCleaner or something like revouninstaller)

I already have the 340.52 setup file. I have:

HD Audio Driver
3D vision Controller
Graphics Driver
3D vision driver
Geforce Experience
PhysX.

From what I know, I should disable windows update and disconnect the internet so that Windows doesn't try to reinstall some odd drivers?

[UberFiend]

Only install Windows Important Updates & leave the Optional ones.

ccleaner is perfectly fine, it's nice & quick & the registry is a complete nightmare to go through manually, i've done it countless times. however it is certainly your perogative not to use it, but I would recommend it under the circumstances.

[chiefputsa☒lag]

Originally posted by UberFiend:

I think if the monitor was dying you wouldn't get neat, multi-coloured, horizontal lines. I think it's either the graphic card dying or an issue with the drivers.

When you uninstall them reboot & run ccleaner through the registry to get rid of any loose ends. Reboot again & reinstall the latest driver from nvidia's website. And reboot.

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download/standard

the OP tested the monitor on another PC, unless he was so unlucky that both PCs exhibited the same problem: suspected bad gpu.

common items on both test scenarios: monitor, dvi cable + vga dapter
variables: 2 computers, 2 gpus

since the issue of a dvi cable + vga adapter has been raised, to use a pure vga cable, and not done due to lack of vga video ports in both computers, imo, hdmi cable must be used to further rule out video cable malfunction.