Baffling computer woes

[M4v3r1ck]

I have a friend who has asked me to try and fix his computer. It seems his monitor is periodically refresh/click off for a fraction of a second or freeze up for a fraction of a second when doing a variety of things on his cpu. Most noticeably was while using IE (latest version) and scrolling down using the scroll bar at the side. If you get part of the way down it flickers off for 1/2 sec and then back on. I saw it happen 3 times while I was there and in that short period, it got really annoying. He is running windows xp with 256 mb of ram. Service Pack 2 is installed on his machine. He has the latest driver from the manufactuer of his monitor. I tried to change the driver to a standard driver for a plug and play monitor, but that didnt fix it. Do you think this is hardware or software? My next step will be to make sure he has the latest drivers for his video card, unless someone else has some suggestions.

Thanks

Mav

[Guest]

hey Mav

i had that problem too, i did a virus scan and i had 6 viruses, i fixed them all and the flickering stoped. maybe that will help.

[M4v3r1ck]

interesting, ill check that out, thanks kool

[KrAzYdAvE]

I'd scan it for viruses and spyware first also, if you get all of that off, try using a different monitor on the PC and see if it still does it.
May be the monitor...

[M4v3r1ck]

swap the monitor! doh, why didnt i think of that. simply step when troubleshooting. I'll try that after I check it for spyware. Thanks Dave.

[NightReaver[CotC]]

just a little helping hand in case you weren't aware.

free virus scan online

http://housecall.trendmicro.com


try it if you like pretty simple and it does the trick.

[M4v3r1ck]

thanks night, i've been using trend for a while now. Reliable imo.

cheers

Mav