when i was messing with the refresh rate settings i noticed thAt my eyes were more comfortable looking at 100 hz then 72 or 85. i heard that settings the refresh rate too high will ruin the monitor. it shows that the montior will go up to 120 hz. is this a good setting at 100 hz?

In Windows HELP, click Index, then type: refreshing monitor You will find some info. there.

If your monitor is rated for 120, then 100 is fine. Damn, sounds like a good monitor. You can damage your monitor if you exceed the maximum rated refresh rate. I did this when 17" monitors were around $600. Ouch. The refresh rate is the speed at which the electron gun at the back of the picture tube "paints" a fresh picture on your screen. The way this happens is there is a magnetic yoke wrapped around the tube. The electron gun blindy fires off electrons and they're steered toward the screen's pixels by the magnetic field generated by the yoke in a left-to-right top-to-bottom pattern. On a non-interlaced monitor, each row of pixels is refreshed for every scan cycle. On an interlaced monitor, every other row of pixels is refreshed for every scan cycle. So the faster the rate, the harder your monitor has to work.

Windows 2000 + XP have a "bug" concerning the changing of screen resolutions, which defaults the refresh rate back to 60MHz. If you're running an LCD, that isn't a problem, but CRT's are a different animal. http://www.pagehosting.co.uk/rf/ LL

Matthew by default windows hides refresh rates that are too high for your monitor. It does this by looking at the info in your monitors driver. My monitor is going on eight years old and it supports 1024x786 @ 200mhz. So I seriously doubt you'll hurt anything running at 100. The screen would black out if the refresh rate is set too high. LL the bug you talk about it actually a safety feature, the fact you said "bug" makes me think you already knew that LOL. But more importantly it only effects games. Not your desktop. If you have a Geforce card the newer drivers have an option to set different refresh rates for different resolutions. Hope this helps, Sandman