Can some lovely person help me please???!!! Oh you are lovely.

[BendyCowgirl]

I'm all worked up and upset as my monitor died in its sleep a couple of weekends ago. I was an old Packard Bell CRT and I had it for 10 years, it was fine in the night I had it on watching a YouTube video on it then turned it on the next moring and nothing, nada, zip, power came on but no pic. I tried someone elses monitor (an engineer I know) and his worked just fine so for about 10 days I was stuck without a monitor and getting actually pretty distressed as I have emotional health problems and if I feel cut off I dissociate. Yeah fun. So Saturday I found a Dell 16" monitor in a computer shop in town which I bougth for £35, took it home and it didn't play videos properly, they were sort of jumpy. Watched C4 plus BBC. You imagine there's a bus going up a hill in the video, well it sort of didn't go up smoothly it skipped frames sort of thing then after about 20 minutes one half of the screen went flashy. I spoke to a friend who's up on compies and he thought it was dirvers but wasn't sure, spoke to the enigineer I know and he said it didn't sound like drivers but a fault, so I took it back but when they tried it in the shop it was working ok. I got a refund anyway as I was told when I phoned Cash Generator that they had a monitor there but when I got ther they didn't. So now I'm back to square one, no monitor and cut off. Also none the wiser as to what the problem was with the monitor I bought which didn't help. On the search for a new one again now but worried I'll have the same problem. If any of you could maybe help shed light I'd be grateful. THANKS.

BTW another reaosn I returned that machien is I don't trust that shop really he has young lads no more than 15 (or at least to me they look young) working there and the others are all stoned.

I'm in the library at the moment.

[Margaret N]

First no monitor lasts for ever and particularly a CRT.
Having said that you can get a good used slimline/flatscreen monitor for about £50 even less in the local papers. You do need to set them up and that is different for various size monitors etc. Type into google 'How do I setup my monitor' and select a modern description.

[col48]

There can be compatability issues with the other parts of your machine, but if you google the model of monitor as per post 2, you should find the instructions you need depending on the operating system (Windows XP, Linux, Windows7 etc). You might need a driver or a particular minimum spec for your video card.

Not a bad idea to find a local engineer you can trust who can visit and sort things out on the spot. This may not be cheap but it can save a lot of hassle.

[BendyCowgirl]

OK I bought one off ebay just now for £44, 17" HP, hope it works ok, might come back to you if I get stuck if that's ok?

[Margaret N]

If you get a chance to view the current edition of Computer Active they have an article in it about the correct settings for monitors. Take a look in your local 'T' store or similar.