Tim's Tech Tips

Site note:

Even though we haven’t made many posts recently, we’ve been fielding a lot of calls each day. The reason for the lack of posts is that, well, these problems simply aren’t very interesting to read about, in terms of a “tutorial” format.
In an effort to contribute more content to the site, we will now begin making posts about a few more of our calls, detailing the problems that folks have encountered and our solutions. Some posts may be very short, detailing only the problem, the solution, the troubleshooting steps attempted, and how we figured out/fixed the problem. Often these cases are quite interesting. Even when the problem isn’t particularly unique or interesting, the identification and troubleshooting steps often are. On par with that, here is our most recent case:

Problem:

“My monitor has turned to all kinds of weird neon purple and orange colors… All the colors are off!”

Steps taken:

This problem could be caused by a few things, each of which would cause a slightly different hue. Rather than trying to have the customer (who was a very nice and patient young lady) explain the difference between bluish green and greenish blue, we simply began diagnosis.
Click "Read more" for the continuation. 


-For starters, we checked the accessibility options (Start menu –> Control Panel –> Accessibility Options, or "Ease of Access Center” in Vista). We were looking for whether or not “High contrast mode” was turned on, or not. That can cause all the colors of Windows to be ‘off’. This setting was already turned off, so we checked the next logical option…
-The settings buttons on the physical monitor. Modern monitors usually have an “automatic” configuration button. Hers did not have one of those, so I had her scan through the settings and tweak them one by one to see if it helped at all. It only made things worse, unfortunately. It wasn’t the monitor’s settings. Next…
-After some probing, it sounded like the colors were leaning toward the purple/blue range, which is often caused by electromagnetic (or magnetic) interference. The customer indicated that she had a CRT monitor. Bingo. (CRT monitors are hugely more susceptible to interference.) I had her check to make sure that all of her electronics, appliances, and anything that drew a current was at least 1-3 feet away from her monitor. They were. No go. I then asked the stupid but obvious question – Were there any magnets attached to the monitor, or near the monitor? Anything that might have a magnet IN it? – No such luck.
-There are two possible sources for this problem – Software (some setting somewhere), or hardware. In order to eliminate one of those options and narrow my guess, I decided to connect to her computer over remote administration (with her permission). I identified some objects of various colors (the standard Windows folder icon, the gray start menu button, etc.) and asked her to describe the colors to me. On my end, they looked perfectly normal, but on hers they appeared strange and neon. Bingo. It’s a hardware issue. But we’ve already determined it’s not the monitor’s settings… bad news. That means it’s the monitor itself.
Unfortunately, we had to let her know that aside from jiggling things around and disconnecting/reconnecting the monitor cable, the best bet for her was to get a new monitor. Maybe a nice flat-panel LCD. We always hate to see hardware failure. It’s the very last thing you want to have to tell a customer, because so often, as in this case, it’s difficult or impossible to fix. Sorry, Mary. :-(