Pictures becoming blurry

[punimac]

Recently the pictures on my monitor have started to look blurry - only the pictures. I have a Compaq Deskpro with Win 2000 Professional installed - the monitor is a Panasonic. The only change I had recently made was to attach a Lexmark 3 in 1 printer to the PC. I am a novice and any help will be appreciated.
Thanks,
punimac

[ski]

Did you check your monitor on another system?

[punimac]

No..I have just one PC..

[ski]

How about a friend's or relative's system?
It's really a good way to determine if the monitor is the cause.

[punimac]

Thanks for the suggestion. The monitor works fine on other system. Now what ?

[Budfred]

That suggests that it is a driver issue, a video card issue or a security issue...

For the driver issue, you will need to find the driver for your video card which may mean finding out what video you have to begin with. Let us know if you don't know how to do that. If you do, it might be worthwhile to search online to see if you have the latest driver. You can look in Device Manager to see what you have now and note if there is a yellow mark by it (indicating a problem). Once you have the driver, Remove what you have in Device Manager and install the driver you found.

For the video card issue, if you use a video card rather than onboard video, it might be worthwhile to try another video card. If you are using onboard video, you might need to switch to a video card, but the video drivers should probably be tried first.

For the security issue, it is possible that you have a virus, spyware or other invader causing your problem. Run a full set of security scans for that. Post back if you don't know how to do that.

And Welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif

[punimac]

I checked the Norton Virus progrma which tells me that it detected a virus on Sep 03 and that's th etime frame when I started to have the problem. However I can't find what did it do to that virus. My Norton is updated only till April 03. I'd appreciate help regarding running the virus scan on my PC as I feel there is some virus or spyware in the system.

Thanks for all the help so far. It's interesting to note that the VCD's run fine on my monitor using my own PC.

[Budfred]

Okay, go to mjc's security thread (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15179) and follow the link to an online scan, I think there are 3 of them listed. Once you deal with that, you may want to use the link to AVG and install the free version of their antivirus. It is respected around here and, at least right now, it doesn't expire.....

[punimac]

THe picture is now fine. The problem was with the Internet Explorer. I installed Netscape and the pictures are just fine. But doing the virus scans etc. were a blesing in disguise as I found a number of viruses on my system. I find however that the Netscape is a better browser as compared to IE.
Thanks for all those who helped me with this problem.

[ski]

Sometimes problems with IE 5.5 and 6.0 can be fixed either with its repair tool, or by uninstalling and reinstalling it.