I have an issue that just reared its head last night after I'd changed the refresh rate in Windows for my display from 60 Hz to 75 Hz, then back again. This action seems to have triggered a glitch in one of my devices or drivers that's causing a horrible graphical distortion when I lower my resolution to 1024x768 or 800x600. The effect can best be described as a "mini-blind" effect and makes it virtually impossible to read text, as there are huge horizontal jaggies all down the screen, top to bottom. It basically looks like the display is going into or out of a dream sequence. After returning the display to a 1280x1024 resolution, the distortion disappears and everything goes back to normal. I would simply leave it at the higher resolution and ignore this issue, if one or two games I play regularly (Diablo 2's one of them) didn't require that I ran at a lower resolution (800x600 or lower).

I've called the manufacturers of my monitor, video adapter, and motherboard (in that order), and each of them said they'd never heard of this issue and simply passed the buck to the next device. Quite frustrating, as you might imagine.

Some things I've tried thus far are uninstalling and reinstalling the monitor in Device Manager, reinstalling the drivers to my video card (latest versions), and I plan to check the BIOS and update if necessary this afternoon.

I should mention that when in Safe Mode, this problem disappears. Apparently, then, this is a driver issue for sure, but which driver and what's the solution?

The applicable hardware is:

Samsung 191TPlus LCD
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB
Abit KV7 motherboard (I thought my problem might be a faulty AGP driver, but Abit claims this motherboard doesn't use one, as all control of the video is left to the video adapter in the AGP slot)

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

try this:
click start>run and type in 'msconfig' (without the quotes)
go to services check the box saying 'hide all microsoft services'
un-tick all the boxes (unless you know what they are)
do the same in the startup tab (except there are no windows startup items to hide)
click apply and re-start your computer

also, un-plug all un-necisarry devices (printer, scanner, mp3, usb modem......) and see if it then works.

hope this helps,
Mike

Thanks, Mike. I actually solved this myself after much tinkering by downloading and using Driver Cleaner on all of my VIA drivers and running the latest VIA 4-in-1 drivers again. Go figure. I think I might go back to ASUS w/ my next mb, if I don't end up purchasing an Alienware box.

ok, glad you sorted it
les us know if we can help you with anything else.

Mike

Originally Posted by madmikejt12

Ok, glad you sorted it
les us know if we can help you with anything else.

Mike

Really appreciate the help, Mike. Thanks again.

Closed thread Opened.

The video glitch has returned. You might remember a post I made (I found it here, but it was closed, and I didn't know how to reopen it) awhile back, and I fixed it by running Driver Cleaner, then reinstalling my Via Hyperion drivers. Well, all I did last night was reinstall a Samsung 191T driver for my LCD monitor, and it brought this problem back! And not only that, but trying the same solution as before didn't help at all! I ran Driver Cleaner on all of my VIA drivers, reinstalled the Hyperion drivers for my chipset, and the distortion still exists when using any resolution from 1024x768 and below.

I'm really beginning to get frustrated here, as this keeps me from playing D2 or any other games that use a lower resolution. Anyone know another possible fix for this issue?

Have you uninstalled and reinstalled the ATI Catalyst Drivers?

Yep. A few times, actually. When that didn't work, I installed the Omega drivers instead, which are working fine, but the problem remained. Strangely enough (good luck explaining this), after getting fed up for the night and powering down, I returned after work the following day and noticed after powering up that the problem had disappeared again.

I think my PC might possibly have some Emily Rose thing going on at this point...