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My laptop is normally connected to a monitor, as a secondary display, via VGA cable. However, it's spent the past week or so away from its usual location. When I came back and reconnected, I suddenly found the monitor image is off-center and distorted. I believe this may be a fault in the monitor hardware or cable, but don't have the extra equipment to test this theory right now. I was hoping someone might be able to confirm this, with specifics as to what component might have failed and what needs to be done to replace it. (Or if I should just replace the monitor outright.)

The problem in particular is that the image appears shifted downward and to the right, and the bottom quarter of the monitor appears to be just repeating the same pixel row.

There's a few reasons I'm pretty sure it's the monitor hardware or cable, and not the graphics drivers or laptop components.

  1. The distortion is not reflected in screenshots.
  2. The distortion also affects BIOS menus, before the OS is loaded.
  3. The monitor's on-screen configuration menus are also distorted when moved into the affected area.

UPDATE: I got another laptop to test with the monitor & cable, and it produced the same results. So the question is now simply one of whether I need a new monitor, or if it's possible this might just be an issue with the cable? Unfortunately, I do not have any spare cables to test with.

Here's a screenshot of the display:

enter image description here

And here's an actual photo:

enter image description here

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  • Not sure what you're question to us is... You've proven it's the monitor or cable, so go get and try a known-good cable, if it doesn't help get a new monitor -- VGA cables are CHEAP, so start with that.
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Commented Apr 25, 2014 at 20:31
  • My question is, is this something that can possibly be caused by the cable or is it a problem that could only (or is much more likely to) be caused by the monitor itself?
    – Iszi
    Commented Apr 25, 2014 at 20:32
  • It very well could be the cable, but "Yes it could be the cable" doesn't make for a very useful answer. :) Examine it for damage if you want, but really they're cheap, just go get and try a new one. If you don't WANT to try a cable first (which is cheap and easy), then go buy a new monitor (which probably comes with a new cable).
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Commented Apr 25, 2014 at 20:34
  • I'm not just looking for a "yes it could be the cable". A good answer should be along the lines of "It could be the cable, and this is how it might be broken in a way that could create that effect..."
    – Iszi
    Commented Apr 25, 2014 at 20:53
  • Go to somewhere like Goodwill to get a used cheap video cable; a few bucks spent and you've now saved yourself a lot of time trying to diagnose something in complex ways that can be diagnosed by that tiny investment instead. The most effective diagnosis is usually the one that finds the problem the quickest, even if it isn't the most technically complex.
    – Debra
    Commented Apr 26, 2014 at 7:56

1 Answer 1

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VGA interface is analogical. This means the image is transmitted using synchronized continuous signals to encode every pixel color. The picture shows a repetition in the bottom of the screen but more than half the image is good. If you had a problem with the cable, that would affect the entire image. Typical VGA cable problems is having the whole image without a color component (i.e. the screen looks green or magenta). I guess your monitor has a problem in the last stages of the image processing circuits.

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