Is it my monitor or something else?

Question

Lately my monitor has been doing some odd things. The screen keeps going dark, with rainbow like patterns coming from the two bottom corners. Sometimes the image on the screen seems to be dragging down, that the only way I can explain it. It looks like it's being pulled down from the bottom and my taskbar disappears.

I have a compaq computer and when I asked them about this they told me that it was either the monitor or the "graphics card????" (something like that). Can anyone help me with this?
Once out of frustration my sister hit the monitor, and it started working properly.

sometimes when I get on my desktop it says windows just recovered from a serious system error, then it sends me to a page telling my I needed to update my graphics driver???, I downloaded, but I still get the same problems

Answer 1

try get a new monitor, a graphic card problem wouldnt be affected if you hit the monitor hard. and another thing is do u use the flat screen or CRT monitors? CRT monitors tend to have that problem if you purchase a really low standard one. If you cant get a flat pannel i recomend you to get a veiw sonic CRT monitor. those are good. But just to make sure it's not the graphic card, borrow someone's monitor and hook it up to ur comp and see if that problem occur, but try get a monitor that is like urns, eg if u use flat screen, borrow a flat screen; if CRT, borrow a CRT. later....good luck

Answer 2

First try this reboot press F8 every 5-8 seconds any more and the keyboard will freeze and choose Last Known Good configuration, it's always worth a shot then....
Check your monitor cord to begin with make sure none of the little brass tips are bent or missing if not, then right click on my computer and properties, Hardware tab and device manager. See if there are any bangs (!) marks next to it, even if so it could be lying, check your Graphics controller, monitor, graphics card and video card. Try first with each one to update the driver, if no joy, roll back the driver, if still no joy unintstall ( all of this is one at a time) reboot and see. Is there any magnitic items around? Go to the monitor or pc's website for the lastest downloads and drivers...run the drivers from there don't save them. You can open the cover and reseat your video and graphic card. Go to this site for some diagnostic tools....
http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/english.html?/b_e.html
another great site is
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/moredone/twomonitors.mspx

Answer 3

It is not likely your graphics card. Actually it sounds like you have something magnetic near the bottom of your screen. Do you have speakers there? Try moving them

Answer 4

probably you got the wrong driver for your video/graphics card... you need to know the exact specs of your video card and download from its site the driver....