I am having this problem for just a week. When I start the computer the screen is too dim and at the desktop the picture is a bit expanded.on the left I can see half of the icons of my computer, my documents etc.At the bottom the upper edges of start button are visible. Everything is too dark but stil visible. Then I start internet explorer and within 2 to 3 minutes everything become clear and normal. I can then use the computer for hours and hours with no problems. If I restart then it boots back quite ok with normal brightness.Problem seems to associated when computer is started after some hours of closing down. Mine is a 5 year old 17 inches dell m770 monitor which has worked perfectly up to now. Is it a sign that the monitor is dying or it could be other things like my integrated video which is sis 630 ? Any help is greatly appreciated

That's a sign that the monitor is dying. Assuming your video is not damaged, the video has nothing to do with it. Video drivers have nothing to do with it. The filaments inside the crt tube are what produce the electron stream that in turn produces the light you see, and they have a finite life - there is a limited amount of emmisive material on the filaments that is used up slowly over time and eventually the filaments can no longer produce enough of a stream and in turn light and your brightness will get dimmer and dimmer as time goes on until it is so dim it is useless. In the later stages, when you first turn on the monitor it is much dimmer when the monitor is started from cold, but it gets better as the filaments heat up. It will inevitably get worse until it is so dim it is useless. There is a brightness adjustment that can be made inside the case of the crt monitor, but that is not something most people should attempt unless they are meticulously careful - you can give yourself a jolt just like that of a spark plug wire if you touch the wrong places or if you don't use the proper tool to move the adjustment - hence the reason you can't get at the adjustment from the outside. If anyone adjusts it, it should be left to a repair technician who is familiar with how to do it properly. Even so, it only helps temporarily - all that does is up the filament voltage a bit, and a short time later the emissive material is again not putting out enough, and you have to replace the monitor anyway. It is for this very reason that it only helps tempoarily that TV's no longer have this primary brightness adjustment on the outside of the case either. Similarly, LCD monitors do not have filaments, but they have a backlight (or two)that is a tiny flourescent tube - the technical name for it is a Cold Cathode Flourescent Lamp - a CCFL. The LCD pixels do not prodice any light - the light from the backlight is modified by it's light going through the LCD pixels. Eventually the backlight - the CCFL - will burn out and have to be replaced. ..... How do you make your monitor last longer? My Mitsubishi Diamond Scan 15VX is at least 7 1/2 years old and has been frequently used. It's brightness is still good, and it's display is still sharp and clear. I have other old crt monitors that are used less often that are also still good. I shut down my computer several times a day. I turn off the power bar that both the computer and monitor are connected to several times a day, but less often than I shut down the computer. The power bar both are connected to is always off overnight. - Keep the brightness to the minimum you can stand and clearly see. If you play games, you may have to turn it up a bit for the game - turn it down afterward. - Use a screen saver if you like using one. Using a screen saver that blanks the screen (turns off the display)is better than using one that doesn't. Having it set to come on at a more reasonable longer time is better than having it come on frequently at too short a time. Personally I don't use one. I have my Control Panel - Power Management settings set to turn off the monitor after 15 minutes of no activity (that could be longer); Standby there doesn't get along with my mboard. - Do not run your computer 24/7 if you don't need to - with the monitor on all the time you could be wasting as much as 2/3 of the life of the monitor, and the computer hard drives, or more. - Do not have your crt monitor powered and on 24/7, even in it's own Standby mode. The filaments on a crt monitor are probably being used even when in a screen saver blank screen state or in Windows Shut Down, Standby, or Hibernate modes, at a lower voltage (to lessen "wake up" time), and are still deteriorating but at a slower pace. Turn off the crt (or LCD) monitor when you are not going to be using it for a long time. - Do not run your computer 24/7 with the monitor on all the time if the monitor doesn't need to be on all the time, even if you are using a screen saver, or it goes into standby or hibernate modes automatically - turn off the monitor when you are not going to be using it for a long time. You certainly don't need it on when you are asleep.

buy a new monitor now. if you have ever been "popped" by a crt., ouch! that thing is dead, get rid of it. no joke.

Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling your video drivers?The below site has drivers for WinXP.Your monitor is probably going but...... http://driver.sis.com/graphic/igp/730630/630_209_winxp.zip

Thanks all of you for your informative replies. For the time being I am relying on the drivers recipe. I also unplugged and then replugged the cables between monitor and motherboard. Things look a bit better. I plan to buy a new monitor when this one dies or becomes unusable. thanks again.

Tubesandwires Your #1 interested me because TV servicing was one of my many engineering activities in the past. At that time the CRT filaments heated a surrounding cathode, and it was the emissive surface of the cathode that usually failed. With TV, filaments without a surrounding cathode hadn't been used since the early days, when the mains power supply was DC (in the UK that is). Without a cathode, AC would have modulated the electron stream causing severe hum bars on the screen. Can I take it therefore that computer monitors, and possibly the newer CRT TV's, now use a DC supply for the filaments - ie with no cathode? I can well imagine a preset adjuster for the filament voltage but doubt that "brightness control" is the right terminology. I do accept that setting this higher (increasing the heat) can result in a temporary improvement. Often filament booster transformers were added to TV's, in the days before the throw away society. These also overcame any internal heater-cathode shorts. Thx DerekW

I know nothing about DC mains powered anything. We've never had it where I live in Canada, and for that matter except for a small area of the eastern US in the very early days, all mains power in North America has always been AC, standardized at 120 volts a long time ago. Transformers only work with AC current. If the mains were DC, you would have to use some way of converting it to AC so that you could use a transformer to get the high voltage needed. A CRT by definition must have a cathode - CRT after all is an abbreviation for Cathode Ray Tube. I don't think the physical makeup of the "electron gun(s)" and cathode(s) and it's circuits have changed much - what has changed is manufacturers are a lot more concerned about whether they could be held liable if a consumer was shocked trying to adjust that control. Most if not all monitors and TV's for a long time now here have two primary adjusters inside the case, at the high voltage ("flyback") transformer - one for brightness or overall gain or whatever you want to call it, the other for Focus, or whatever you want to call it. In the old days here, many TV's had at least the primary brightness comtrol accessible at the back of the case, by means of a long plastic or otherwise insulated shaft you could turn with your fingers, or by means of an access hole you could insert an appropriate tool into to turn the recessed shaft to the control. I've never seem any computer monitor that had them accessible externally. "Often filament booster transformers were added to TV's, in the days before the throw away society." I remember that and I've seen some. " These also overcame any internal heater-cathode shorts." I don't think that's possible. However TV's and crt's used to be expensive enough that it was worthwhile to have them "re-neck" the tube. In most larger places there was a repair place where you could have then cut off the neck of the tube and replace it, complete with a new "electron gun" assembly supplied by the manufacturers.