How-To Geek

Hi folks, Back in June I built a new PC and installed Windows 7 as an OS. I have been quite happy as to how it worked up till now. Yesterday it became "possessed" and I'm not sure what I may have done to it to make it act this way. My monitor is a Samsung P2250 and has a 16:9 screen. Suddenly the sides of my video has squeezed in about 2 inches on each side. The resolution seems to keep changing and the windows sound is indicating a "device connect and then a "device disconnect". It does this flip/flop for about 5 minutes then settles down. All this time the sides remain squeezed. I have tried everything to get the edges of the screen to expand to full wide. Anybody have any ideas what might be going on?

Did you install all the appropriate drivers for the motherboard and video? If it is windows 7 did you right click on desktop, choose set monitor resolution and click the detect button?

Well it looks like I spoke too soon. This morning my PC is still acting weird. The screen resolution is jumping back and forth from hi res (1920 x 1080) to low res (800 x 600). Every time this happens the screen goes black for an instant and I get the audible speaker sound of windows disabling or enabling something. Right now I am at hi res but the sides of my video has squeezed in about 2.5 inches on each side of the monitor, so the actual working surface of the monitor looks square and not a rectangle like it should be. Other than that the picture is clear and fine. I'm going to try downloading some driver updates. Maybe that will help?!

By video adapter do you mean the video card? I am using a Gigabyte A75M -2DH motherboard with built in video. So does this mean my MB could be going bad? Thanks Xhi for your thoughts on this.

Ok, I will try this. I have downloaded the latest Samsung P2250 driver for my monitor and it didn't seem to do anything. The picture is still erratically squeezing in on the sides and the screen often goes black (almost like a blink). I will look for more drivers for the MOBO.

Going back to a restore point has had no effect. I have done everything that I can think of (except switch out the monitor). But I don't think it is the monitor or even a hardware problem. It seems to me that the video adapter (AMD Radeon HD 6530D) is searching for the proper monitor and jumping back and forth between two different resolutions. When I click on to my computer and go to devices it shows my monitor as "Generic Non PnP" and the highest resolution setting is 1600x1200. But my monitor is actually a Samsung SyncMaster P2250 (G) with a resolution of 1920 x 1080. I very seldom get to see the SyncMaster P2250 showing up as my display in Divices. Is there some way that I can remove the "Generic Non PnP" monitor from my Devices?

I agree with the Drive issue diagnosis. After reading ProstheticHead's post I went to the Samsung website and downloaded the latest VGA driver for my monitor, and it has been quite stable for almost 20 hours. Not perfect but it's not jumping all over the place any longer, and when I go to my Printer and Devices screen I see my monitor listed as a Samsung P2250 and set to 1920 x 1080 resolution. Hopefully my problem is solved. Thanks for those who helped, you are awesome people.