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My brother gave me his broken laptop. He was coming down his stairs at
his home and tripped, while carrying his new laptop. The screen is
shattered and torn off. But the rest of the computer seems to work
just fine if I connect a regular monitor. Except for 1 thing. The
screen is fuzzy.

If I use remote desktop everything is perfectly fine. But then that's
using my home computers graphics card to see everything with. It
almost seems like the computer thinks it's using a laptop screen and
is fuzzing it in a way to make it clear on such a screen... or maybe
that's just my hopeful thinking... lol

It's a really really nice laptop and I'd love to get it work with one
of my external monitors.

Can anyone think of what might be causing the problem? Besides him
expediting his trip down the stairs that is? =)

Kyote

Kyote wrote:
> My brother gave me his broken laptop. He was coming down his stairs at
> his home and tripped, while carrying his new laptop. The screen is
> shattered and torn off. But the rest of the computer seems to work
> just fine if I connect a regular monitor. Except for 1 thing. The
> screen is fuzzy.
>
> If I use remote desktop everything is perfectly fine. But then that's
> using my home computers graphics card to see everything with. It
> almost seems like the computer thinks it's using a laptop screen and
> is fuzzing it in a way to make it clear on such a screen... or maybe
> that's just my hopeful thinking... lol
>
> It's a really really nice laptop and I'd love to get it work with one
> of my external monitors.
>
> Can anyone think of what might be causing the problem? Besides him
> expediting his trip down the stairs that is? =)
>
> Kyote

Would this be it ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleartype

Paul

Thank you for the reply Paul. No, that does not appear to be the
problem. After reading your reply I went and got the MS Cleartype tool
after reading some about Clear Type and it didn't make any
improvements to the fuzziness.

Any other ideas on what to try?

Kyote

On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 09:42:33 -0500, Paul <> wrote:

>Kyote wrote:
>> My brother gave me his broken laptop. He was coming down his stairs at
>> his home and tripped, while carrying his new laptop. The screen is
>> shattered and torn off. But the rest of the computer seems to work
>> just fine if I connect a regular monitor. Except for 1 thing. The
>> screen is fuzzy.
>>
>> If I use remote desktop everything is perfectly fine. But then that's
>> using my home computers graphics card to see everything with. It
>> almost seems like the computer thinks it's using a laptop screen and
>> is fuzzing it in a way to make it clear on such a screen... or maybe
>> that's just my hopeful thinking... lol
>>
>> It's a really really nice laptop and I'd love to get it work with one
>> of my external monitors.
>>
>> Can anyone think of what might be causing the problem? Besides him
>> expediting his trip down the stairs that is? =)
>>
>> Kyote
>
>Would this be it ?
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleartype
>
> Paul

Kyote wrote:
> Thank you for the reply Paul. No, that does not appear to be the
> problem. After reading your reply I went and got the MS Cleartype tool
> after reading some about Clear Type and it didn't make any
> improvements to the fuzziness.
>
> Any other ideas on what to try?

Is the external monitor an LCD, or is it a CRT ?

If it is an LCD, the output resolution of the laptop VGA output,
should be set to match the native resolution of the monitor.
For example, my LCD is a 1280x1024, and right now my computer
is set to drive it at 1280x1024, for best clarity. If I drive
the monitor at 1048x768, it won't be as clear.

Paul

>
> Kyote
>
> On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 09:42:33 -0500, Paul <> wrote:
>
>> Kyote wrote:
>>> My brother gave me his broken laptop. He was coming down his stairs at
>>> his home and tripped, while carrying his new laptop. The screen is
>>> shattered and torn off. But the rest of the computer seems to work
>>> just fine if I connect a regular monitor. Except for 1 thing. The
>>> screen is fuzzy.
>>>
>>> If I use remote desktop everything is perfectly fine. But then that's
>>> using my home computers graphics card to see everything with. It
>>> almost seems like the computer thinks it's using a laptop screen and
>>> is fuzzing it in a way to make it clear on such a screen... or maybe
>>> that's just my hopeful thinking... lol
>>>
>>> It's a really really nice laptop and I'd love to get it work with one
>>> of my external monitors.
>>>
>>> Can anyone think of what might be causing the problem? Besides him
>>> expediting his trip down the stairs that is? =)
>>>
>>> Kyote
>> Would this be it ?
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleartype
>>
>> Paul

All my monitors are CRT's
---
Kyote

Kyote wrote:
> All my monitors are CRT's
> ---
> Kyote

I've been racking my brain, trying to think of a mechanism to
mess up the signals, and I cannot think of any really good
credible ones.

The RGB signals start at the GPU. Outside of the GPU, they are
filtered by some EMI filter networks. If a series element in the
filter were to snap in half, you'd get no signal on that color
(and all the colors on the screen would be wrong). If a parallel
element in the filter were damaged, either the signal would be
shorted out, or in fact the signal would look better than usual.
(The EMI filter degrades the picture a bit.)

Once past the filter, the RGB signals have to be maintained in a
75 ohm environment. You've probably seen symptoms before on a CRT<
where this was not met. For example, if the connectors or VGA cable
are not exactly 75 ohms, you may see a slight "ghosting" of the
image.

A lot of the other degradations on a CRT, are at the CRT itself.
Non-linear sweep, twisting of the image rectangle on the screen,
these are all properties of the CRT design. Those kinds of defects
get worse at the higher resolution settings.

The other signals of importance are H and V. Those are the horizontal
and vertical synchronization signals. They time when the beam on the
CRT should retrace. H fires a lot more frequently than V.

If the edge rate of H or V were degraded (slower than normal), I suppose
you could get some slicing jitter. But I'm not 100% certain what
synchronization degradation would even look like - if the signals
fail completely, you'd see, perhaps, a rolling picture on the CRT
(like on an old TV set). For other types of failures (jitter related),
maybe the lower right hand corner of the screen would be fuzzier than
the upper left, for example.

Sorry I cannot help further. The scheme should be relatively bulletproof,
as these things go.

An alternative solution, for video output, would be to buy a PCcard video
or a USB video device. There are very few of those around, and the
output resolution and performance are not very good. The only positive
aspect they'd give you, is a clear image. But the screen updates would
be relatively slow, and not worth the money.

Paul

WOW!! You know quite a bit about video. Thank you very much for all
your help Paul.

I can just keep using it more as a server and remote system. Using it
this way it looks just fine and it's speed and storage come in handy.

Happy Thanksgiving to you Mate

---
Kyote

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (NewCastle) Socket 754
MSI K8T Neo (MS-6702)
DDR, PC3200 (200 MHz), 512 MBytes, Infineon
Adapter : PNY TNT 32mb? (PNY ASSY NO. TNT26432SPCI)reported as Standard VGA

Graphics Adapter
Adapter : NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200
WDC WD600BB-00CAA1 (ATA) : 56GB (F
WDC WD800JD-22JNA0 (SATA) : 75GB (C
PLEXTOR DVDR PX-712A (ATAPI) : N/A (D
HL-DT-ST CD-ROM GCR-8523B (ATAPI) : N/A (E
Microsoft Windows XP (2003) Professional 5.02.3790 (Service Pack 2) Win64 x64
Realtek RTL8169/8110 Family Gigabit Ethernet NIC
Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS (WDM)
430W PS 12v/18a 5v/33a 3.3v/25a