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I've got a single monitor setup on a pretty old PC (Windows 7, i5 2500K, Radeon 5850 GPU) which was doing fine until today.

Today I've had a few instances where my screen suddenly gets offset by ~400px or so, with the right side of my desktop wrapping around to the left on the monitor. It's also accompanied with other visual artifacts, such as black horizontal lines (~10px tall) and other distortion effects.

The first time it happened, I attempted to restart my PC and while Windows was shutting down programs to restart, the problem resolved itself. I don't know if a suspect process was killed to fix the issue.

It seems to be resolved by restarting, but obviously it's concerning. Is there a good way I can diagnose this, to see if it's likely to be either a hardware or software problem?

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  • Sounds like just a memory glitch, perhaps a card needing to be reseated. It might be a good time to vacuum the dust, check that fans on heatsinks spin freely, and carefully unplug and then reseat RAM and video cards. However, it could be Bitcoin-mining malware abusing the GPU, so it wouldn't hurt to check if your browser is "immunized" against mining.
    – DrMoishe Pippik
    Commented Mar 4, 2018 at 0:06
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    The first thing that comes to mind is a horizontal sync issue. Is your connection using a VGA cable? You might want to check it. I would suspect a failing monitor more than a computer issue. But hard to say with your description.
    – Appleoddity
    Commented Mar 4, 2018 at 1:25
  • @DrMoishePippik I'll check the RAM, video card and fans. Not sure about the bitcoin mining, I use Chrome at home with ABP and Disconnect, but not sure if it's still vulnerable. I haven't noticed any usage spikes, but I can also monitor my traffic with Wireshark if things still keep going wrong.
    – Kyle_S-C
    Commented Mar 4, 2018 at 9:05
  • @Appleoddity It's connected by DVI-D. I can swap the cable and monitors if the problem persists. Thanks for the suggestion.
    – Kyle_S-C
    Commented Mar 4, 2018 at 9:07
  • It looks like my GPU may have died. Tried replacing all the other bits in the chain (monitor, cables etc.). One of the two output ports on my GPU is sort of functional, the other is completely non-functional. I've bought a replacement, so will hopefully be able to confirm tonight...
    – Kyle_S-C
    Commented Mar 6, 2018 at 11:10

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