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Defective pixel... on video card??

Posted: Mon May 28, 2007 11:18 pm
by infrd
Okay, this is pretty strange. This morning a new bright pixel grew onto the LCD, and I was naturally [censored]. But it was immediately strange. It seems the pixel can change colour freely, and when an external application like UDPix is used to make the whole screen a solid colour, the defective pixel disappears and everything seems fine. When I put the little flash window over it, the pixel in question seemed to follow just fine. Here's the biggest clue, I changed the resolution and the bad pixel followed suit. Now, what possibly could cause such a problem?

Posted: Mon May 28, 2007 11:28 pm
by brnf
I think it's likely to be a problem with the graphics card. A friend of mine had a similar problem with his Toshiba laptop recently but he had more than one "dead" pixel. Try attaching an external monitor and check if the pixel defect also appears there. Also, in my friends case you could take a screenshot and see the defective pixels there, somehow the contents of the video memory were messed up.

Posted: Mon May 28, 2007 11:34 pm
by infrd
Yeah, definitely the video card. Problem seems fixed now, actually cracked me up the way it was resolved. I turned on the ultranav magnifying glass feature, put it over the 'dead pixel', and suprise surprise, the dead pixel got enlarged. It was at that point the video card realised it was only imagining the dead pixel, and now it's gone as far as I can tell.

Posted: Mon May 28, 2007 11:48 pm
by RonS
If it happens again, just press the middle button between the upper two mouse buttons. It should go away.

Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 1:28 am
by XIII
It is a known bug of the UltraNav:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/UltraNav