LCD Monitor Flickering and "Freezing".

[godspeed7]

I have somewhat of an issue with my 24" SAMSUNG SyncMaster 245BW. I would really appreciate ANY help or input in the matter. [Pictures at the bottom].

This issue only ever seems to appear when I'm playing a game that doesn't support widescreen resolutions, and sometimes -but rarely - when I use Photoshop. When doing those things, I often get screen flicker (a white line that tears through the screen for an instant) and it makes my games appear as if running slowly, as if the framerate drastically goes down. But what is rather annoying is that my screen seems to sometimes jsut "freeze" and turns to inverted colors (Blues and white) and locks like that, and the mouse can barely move. I have noticed this issue only with pre-widescreen supported game, even games as old/new as Battlefield 2. But it is really bad in games like Baldur's Gate, Jagged Alliance 2, Command & Conquer... you get the picture. It has never affected the newer generation games.

I have tried many different things, like changing 32-bit to 16-bit, turning on/off write combining, disabling hardware acceleration, changing the aspect ratio option on my monitor (2 options: I can have my fullscreen games run in a forced widescreen mode or have them run in their normal ratio, so it has the balck bars on each side not to stretch the picture horizontally), cahnging other brightness/contrast, intelligent mdoes, and a bunch of other preset modes... all without succes!

I currently run my monitor on a EVGA 280 GTX SSC which runs like it should with everything else. So I doubt it's a Video Card issue.. I have a Q9450, so CPU power isn't an issue either and running 4 GB's ram, I use Vista x64 Home Premium fully updated as soon as update ready and XP Pro SP2. Video Card drivers are always the most recent, I even try out the beta drivers, and sometimes revert to pre-beta stable drivers... So I doubt this is a driver issue.

Has anyone else had this issue?
Is there anything to fix such an issue?
Is it a problem only with THIS monitor or with most LCD Monitors?

Thanks for any advice or help, it's appreciated!

Here are pictures of the issue in question.. {Flash was not used, so what you see is what I see when it happens}

 

[godspeed7]

Bump..

 

[jaguarskx]

Maybe it's the monitor's or video card port? Try switching ports, connect the monitor via the VGA port to determine if it could be the monitor's DVI port. Maybe it's the video card's port, so connect to the other port.

 

[jaguarskx]

BTW, I haven't seen BG shots in a long time.

 

[godspeed7]

I've already tried both ports unfortunately... I realyl believe it is Monitor-oriented this time.. My computer runs perfectly all the time... just not very good with older pre-widescreen games..

 

[godspeed7]

Thanks though.. maybe someone with a similar problem will fall on this post..

 

[cjl]

It definitely looks like a monitor problem, as LCDs shouldn't do that. I've never seen anything like that before though - do you have another monitor you can try to test it with?

 

[godspeed7]

Actually, yes and thanks for bringing that up.. I haven't even thought about that.. I'll try another monitor this week..

 

[masseyboy1990]

I actually have this very same problem, except mine only occurs on the bottom 2 inches of the screen, and i think only when it gets very cold in my room (right now its working fine)

i know for a fact its not a computer issue because it will continue to do it even when unplugging the cord from the computer.. i really hope there is a way to fix this because atm i dont have the money for another monitor.

 

[shoe]

My samsung syncmaster 245bw if flickering too. It sounds like its a common problem if you search youtube and other web sites. I shelled out 400 clams for this monitor and it didnt last 3 years. Sorry Samsung you lost another customer.