[Hobbes1677]

Hi, I have a four year old Dell Dimension 4700. Recently I decided to buy a new 22 inch Samsung T220 LCD monitor to replace my dying old CRT. I installed the new monitor only to find the image to be grainy and blocky, almost shimmering in some places. There's also a lot of little lines on top of my browser bars. I've taken a couple screen caps since this is hard to describe and uploaded them to Flickr Flickr Photo Download: Screen problem 1 and Flickr Photo Download: Screen problem 2 Any idea of what's wrong and how to fix it? I've tried the analog and DVI hookups, I've installed the monitor drivers off the included CD, I've set it to what it said was the optimal resolution (1680 x 1050) as well as a bunch of others, and still nothing helps.

I run Windows XP, have 2 gigs of DDR2 ram, a 256mb GeForce 6800 graphics card and a Pentium 4 CPU.

Thanks

[Scleros]

I have a Samsung 226BW running at 1680x1050 connected digitally to a NVIDIA 7800 card. All that was required was hooking it up, loading driver, adjusting video card resolution setting and refresh rate, and tweaking font, icon, and menu sizes.

I don't see any obvious problems in the photos posted, but they were re-sized. So assuming the monitor driver installation and video card settings and refresh rate are correct, here are some general troubleshooting comments:

... find the image to be grainy and blocky...

This can result from the monitor scaling an input signal of different resolution than the monitor's native resolution, e.g. computer's video card is set for 800x600 and monitor's native resolution is 1680x1050.

...almost shimmering in some places...There's also a lot of little lines on top of my browser bars...

This could be due to signal cable noise and interference from nearby power cords, other devices, unstable electrical power, etc. or a video card that isn't up to the task at its highest resolutions.

Also, I have a public library customer that has several hundred Samsung monitors. Two of the more recent acquisitions have been bad out of the box with image stability problems. I can only describe the issue as "horizontal tearing" or flickering which sounds somewhat like your shimmering. Perhaps you received a lemon. If you purchased it locally, take it back to the store and have them hook it up to one of their systems (or alternatively one of your own) at the same resolution and refresh rate and see if issue persists.