What is causing my fuzzy/vibrating computer screen?

Computer screen displays bars and stripes when turned on?

• When I turn on my computer screen, there's a chance of about 1 in 2 that, instead of displaying the screen I'd expect, it only shows random bars and stripes all across. These bars have the colours of the usual screen below. For example, I'm visiting this site, Yahoo answers. I leave the pc for a while, and the screen switches itself to stand-by. Then, when I return and the screen switches itself back on, it would display green or blue bars, the colours of this page, which would then gradually glow brighter. Then what I'd do to temporarily fix this is turn the screen off and back on again, repeating this process up to 5 times until it shows the normal screen. So what's causing this? Is it anything I could try fixing myself, should I learn to live with it or, perhaps, expect to be needing a new screen soon? The screen is a 1280x1024 pix (19") Acer AL1916. It's a couple of years old now. Thanks for answering.

• Answer:

  It sounds as if your monitor is going bad. Since it does come back to normal after 5 on/off cycles, that kind of indicates it's the monitor and not the graphics card inside the computer case. What you could do to prove this one way or the other, would be to see if you could borrow a friends monitor and connect it to your computer and see if it does the same thing. It doesn't have to be the same model monitor, just one you know for sure is working fine. If you don't get the lines like when your monitor is connected, then I believe you've found the problem. If the lines are there, then you'll have to consider the graphics card as the culprit. Check to see if the monitor is still under warranty!