- Okay. Now onto Video Troubleshooting part 2.
Now, we'll talk about some of the symptoms
that you might see in the field.
And some of these are listed in the CompTIA A+ objectives
and we'll talk about some of the solutions to those issues.
First is VGA mode.
What if your computer boots into VGA, 640 x 480?
Well, it could be that you don't notice,
but it's actually going into safe mode or safe boot.
So you check that first.
Secondly, and normally you'll see safe mode
in the corner to screen,
and, you know, you can check that pretty easily.
But secondly, it could be that the driver has failed
or it's not compatible with the video card.
So, you wanna check the driver as well
and either roll it back if a new driver was just installed
or update the driver and see if that fixes the problem.
Once you get that nice crisp screen
that you can fit lots of icons on,
then you know you have that high resolution
working properly.
In addition, you might just have to check
the resolution setting.
And we talked about that, you know.
You might have your monitor here
and it might be set to 800 x 600, you know,
it might be set to 640 x 480 or 1024 x 768,
all of these old school, 4 x 3 aspect ratio resolutions
which will leave a black area
on the left and right sides of the screens,
that is basically, you know, what you wanna look for.
You wanna check that resolution,
you wanna check that driver.
Also dead pixels and artifacts.
You wanna watch out for those.
They can be really annoying.
And, you know, especially if you have a brand new monitor.
Now, if you see one on a brand new monitor,
you really should box it up and send it back
and get a replacement right away.
You shouldn't have to mess with that.
But if the monitor has been around for a while,
you want to do that power cycle that we talked about
and, you know, let it sit,
even let it sit overnight
and see if that fixes the problem,
then plug it back in, turn it back on.
See if that fixes the problem
after you've let it sit overnight.
And we mentioned the third party software as well.
There's a lot of third party programs
that can actually fix some pixels if it's a software issue.
If it's a hardware issue
or there's any damage to the display
and your power cycling doesn't work,
then you want to return that monitor.
'Cause it could get worse.
If the color patterns are incorrect,
well, you wanna watch out for that as well.
You might have older computers
that are set to a low color depth,
like, 8 bit color depth,
which is rare, but you might see that.
And even the 16 bit or 24 bit settings might not be enough
for the person's application in question.
So generally, it runs at 32 bit by default
on most video cards within Windows.
But you do wanna check that.
And we showed that also.
Again, just to show it again,
the screen resolution, advanced settings
and go to monitor and colors.
And you might also check that in the third party software.
if you have third party software
from your video card manufacturer,
you might do that as well.
An overheat shut down.
Now, the display could shut down
and the display will go amber.
This is a tough one to troubleshoot.
But if you open the system
and you feel the video card
and it's really hot,
like, it's burns your finger almost,
then you know, you have an idea there that,
Ooh, it overheated.
And generally the cause for that is a clogged up computer.
Either the fans are really dirty and have either failed
and it could be the fan on the video card
or an exhaust fan on the system,
or there's just too much stuff in there
and too many cables and it needs to be cleaned up.
Meaning tied up, tie up the cables, do cable management
or you might need a liquid cooling system
or a more powerful video card.
If there's no image on the screen at all,
you want check the power,
you wanna check the power button, see if it's on first.
And then you wanna check those connections.
You know, your video connection to the computer,
your power connection from the monitor to the AC outlet.
You know, if the light is amber,
that means it is plugged in, but it's not receiving signal.
If it's blue, it's receiving signal.
And if you still see nothing on the screen,
if it's blue or green or a color like that,
if you still don't see anything on the screen,
then you're gonna wanna go into more troubleshooting.
Maybe try safe mode, maybe try rolling back the driver,
maybe try a different port.
Make sure it's connected to the right port.
Sometimes if it's amber
and you don't see anything on the screen,
you know you're not getting that data signal
and it could be because the resolution is incorrect
or the display was disabled,
the display adapter was disabled.
So there's a lot of possibilities with that.
You have to remember that if it's amber,
it's not getting any data signal from the computer.
So there could be a lot of possibilities for that
on the hardware and the software side.
Next is dim image.
Well, then you're gonna check the brightness
and you check that on the OSD on the screen.
And this is really common on laptops.
You know, people reduce the brightness
for a variety of reasons
and they might forget to increase it
once they're in a darker area.
So check that on the function keys on the laptop
and the OSD on a monitor for a desktop.
Flickering image could be an issue.
That means, okay, the resolution's not right
or possibly the driver's not working properly.
This was more of a problem with CRTs.
You don't see it that often on LCDs, but it is possible.
So you wanna check that driver, check the connections,
check the resolution.
Distorted image.
This could be a problem with the GPU.
If the GPU overheats,
it might not just shut down and display nothing
and the monitor goes amber,
it might actually distort the image or a part of the image.
Also, if the display is damaged,
you could get a distorted image in a portion of the display.
It's a possibility as well.
Oversized image and icons.
This is another one in the compTIA objectives.
If this happens, chances are the resolution is too high.
Oh, excuse me, the resolution is too low.
Do that again.
If this happens, the resolution is probably too low
or the DPI setting has been changed.
If we go to screen resolution here,
go back to display,
we can set a custom text size,
we can also change it the entire screen size for text.
You know, so, it could be that it's set
to one different one like this.
You know, if it's larger like this,
well, okay, we can modify that here.
That's for the text size and window size.
So that's in,
that's separate from the resolution itself
where if we modify the size here,
everything gets bigger also.
So, different settings there, but kind of the same thing.
So those are a couple things to watch for
for oversize images and icons.
And of course, if it is booting into VGA mode,
you're gonna get that as well.
So you wanna, you know, check that,
check that driver as well, if that's the problem.
But generally that's a resolution issue.
Next is the distorted geometry and burn-in.
And again, these types of things are generally CRT.
So just in case you get a question on cathode ray tube.
Because CRT is in the objectives acronym list
but it's not in the actual objectives.
And actually, I do know some people that use them,
you know, I do know some people
that use CRTs in labs.
You know, science labs and things like that,
where they've just been using the same monitor forever
because it works and they don't wanna mess with it.
They don't even want to disconnect anything
from the computer for fear of it failing.
So, you might see that with an old CRT.
And if you see that trapezoidal shape,
you can modify that with the buttons on the screen
that are on the edge of the display
or within the onscreen display in the menu,
depends on the age of the CRT.
And the burn-in, well, that's usually an issue
that can't really be resolved.
You can try power cycling it
and you can try running a couple programs
to help re-stimulate the pixels.
But quite often it doesn't work
and burn-in is kind of permanent on those.
But that's just in case you get a question on CRT,
which is unlikely.
It's also unlikely that you'll encounter those.
But you know, that all depends.
Some places they need all the space they can get.
And CRTs are so deep that, you know,
you have to have a flat panel.
Other places don't have the money to upgrade.
Other labs just keep what they have
and, you know, whatever, they just go with it.
So, just in case you happen to see
a distorted geometry or burn-in,
you know what to do with that.
So, that's some more troubleshooting,
some symptoms that you wanna look out for
and the potential solutions for those.
But always keep your mind open.
You never know there might be
additional solutions out there.
It all depends.
There's a lot of possibilities
when it comes to the video subsystem.
And so, that's it for this sub-lesson and for the lesson.
And you'll see at the next one.