Annoying, occasional flickering on my monitor?

Flickering Monitor

• Dear Jim, I own a Samsung Syncmaster monitor and recently turned on the degaussing button. After this, my monitor keeps on flickering to small and big screen, sometimes changing the brightness of the screen to light and dark. At one point it blacked out for a split second. What could be the problem and what should i do to correct this? what does degaussing do to a monitor? Many thanks in advance. Evan  

• Answer:

  Monitors are very prone to interference from magnetic fields, even the earth's natural magnetic field. The earth's magnetic field is always changing, thus it has a constant influence on the monitor. In order to reduce these effects every monitor has a degauss circuit that helps keep the colors pure and the geometry correct. There is a coil of wire that goes around the picture tube just under the plastic near the front of the monitor. This is the degauss coil. When the monitor is turned on it will automatically degauss itself by sending a large current though this coil of wire. The degaussing circuit uses a thermistor to taper off the degaussing current over a period of a few seconds. Tapering the current off prevents the degaussing process from actually creating a residual magnetic field in the metal parts of your monitor instead of eliminating them. Flicker is caused by running low refresh rates, what resolution / refresh rate are you running. If the image is shrinking this is a sign that the power supply is going bad. If this is the case I suggest you look for a new monitor soon. Monitors are not worth repairing. The cost is often more than a new unit. Jim Witkowski MonitorsDirect.com