Weird fuzzy display - comes and goes

nhcotrim

Honorable
Jun 19, 2013
20
0
10,510
I have a problem on my HP dm1 laptop. This problem affects all displays, either the built in, or via the VGA or HDMI connections.

The problem is that the screen becomes "fuzzy" (capture image in http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1076277/desktop_problem.jpg ). If I refresh the window, or move it out of the display and back in, or if it is the desktop, select an area, that bit goes away - so if I have two windows side by side, I have to do it to one, then the other. Re-scaling also works. I still haven't really figured out what triggers it. I thought it was memory, but it happens while only running Firefox with a couple of tabs. It is specially bad with pdf files - sometimes I can't even read, because as soon as I move the page, it "fuzzes up".

I don't know if it's related, but while watching videos, sometimes the screen goes all dark and slowly, as the scene moves, it clears again - resizing or jumping fixes it immediately. It happens even with low res videos (640x480)

The laptop came from the factory running Win7 32, and it started a few months after I bought it - I thought it was just a software issue and didn't bother sending it to HP - fool me!

If I'm not mistaken, it might have happened after some updates. But since it's intermittent, it might have been before and I never noticed.

I have since reinstalled Windows 7 32, installed Win 7 64 and a few months ago, upgraded to Win 8 64 via a clean Win 7 64 installation. All installations were clean, from scratch, formatting the c: partition and reinstalling all software - no images, no recoveries, so drivers and software were always new.

It happens on other displays, so it's not display related. It "clears up" by moving/resizing/refreshing the windows, so I can't believe it's hardware (on-board graphic card) related. The only think I can think of is drivers, but Win automatically found the "right" drivers and never complained...

HP only has drivers for Win 7 32, but as I said, it happens with Win 7 32 as well.



I really want to get this sorted, as otherwise, it's not a bad machine, specially to take on holidays if I need more than just a tablet. Or to use a home server...
 
Solution
I wouldn't put too much stock in that to be honest - better to use an nVIDIA/AMD/Intel graphics diagnostic tool (if such a tool exists). I'm afraid I can't advise with the software - not something I've ever done before. I can't see any drawbacks to remote desktop though.
Why don't you believe it's hardware-related? I'd say that's exactly what it is. Those chips don't last forever. Complicates things a little that it's a laptop - with a desktop you could just swap out the card. After all these fresh installations though it's clearly not a software issue.
 

nhcotrim

Honorable
Jun 19, 2013
20
0
10,510
Maybe a new version of drivers that's not playing nice?

If it's hardware, maybe I could use it as headless server... as long as I don't stream video...

Any suggestion for software? or just use windows and share the drive and remote control all the software (utorrent, vpn, etc)?
 
I wouldn't put too much stock in that to be honest - better to use an nVIDIA/AMD/Intel graphics diagnostic tool (if such a tool exists). I'm afraid I can't advise with the software - not something I've ever done before. I can't see any drawbacks to remote desktop though.
 
Solution