I have an Envision 17in monitor (crt) which is about 5 years old. For the last few years, when it gets hot, the lower half of the screen flickers with black bars. I can usually cool it off with a fan and everything goes back to normal. Today the monitor started to flicker as usually, until the black bars on the lower half of the screen started to get larger and eventually devoured the entire screen (basically the screen went black). Now when I turn on the monitor, all i have is an extremely bright strip (1 inch wide) across the middle of the screen and no amount of cooling seems to fix it. My guess is it's finally burned out? I realize its old, and has had problems for years, im just wondering if there's a posibility I could continue running it or I need to buy a new one (not the best option). Also what are my options for cooling to prevent future problems (besides floor fans/air conditioners). Are there monitors that have fans (high performance?) in them? Are there accessories for cooling or monitoring the temperature? I know air flow is always an issue, so a while ago i moved my monitor away from the wall into open space.

Give up on it. You can get a brand new replacement for less than a tech would charge to look at it let alone repair.As far a cooling goes it should be unnecessary unless you work in a sauna. adequate ventilation around sides and top together with a periodical external clean/vacuum to remove dust from the vent holes is all that is required. and if you get 5 years out of the next one be grateful it lasted about 4 yrs longer than the warranty. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and his wife will never forgive you.

Thanks for the reply. I gave up on it and found a nice deal on a new one. It turns out the new monitor designed pretty well. Where as the old monitor was a huge box, with a few vents in the rear, the new monitor has a cone shape (smaller near the beginning of the tube) and is almost a plastic mesh as there's hundreds of air holes covering the entire case. I guess the company took cooling into consideration! BTW it's an Envision EFT720.

As far as I'm concerned CRT monitors all belong in the junkyard. First there is the heat problem and radiation dangers--I used to run a fan on my CRTs all the time... Then there's the blurry image compared to the new LCDs. I was a huge fan of CRT when I got a 19" Sony G-420 about 3 years ago. I saw some LCDs and thought how bad they were. Well LCD technology has come a long way in the past 3 years and I now got a 17" Princeton seNERGY model, and I never use the G-420 anymore. The LCD image is so beautiful and sharp that all CRTs (even the G-420 which was the best CRT I ever saw) look blurry to me. ClearType technology in Windows makes LCD text look very much like CRT text but sharper. No wonder Sony has stopped manufacturing almost all lines of CRTs! Getting the LCD was the most amazing upgrade I ever made in all the 20 years of owning computers... It makes me smile every day. Tek.