monitor not only flickers, but also hisses!!!

[whatever3]

it scared the hell out of me this evening. when i booted up after a few hours of being shut down, the monitor was hissing very loudly as though it were leaking air/gas. very odd -- i thought it was going to blow up. once the shell booted, there was a lot of flickering and horizontal lines. after a few more seconds, there was a click and the hissing and flickering all stopped. now it is completely fine. this apparently happened this morning as well when my girlfriend booted up the computer.

it's a Sony Multiscan E200 (Trinitron) and its only 3 years old. i also tend to let the monitor go to standby mode when the computer is off (not sure if that could be a problem). if it were just flickering, i wouldn't be too concerned, but the hissing is really scary.

anyone ever experience this? any ideas on how to fix it? or should i be looking into a new monitor?

Thanks!

 

[Willoughbyva]

Maybe you have the settings to high for the monitor? Does your monitor support what it is set at or what it is set at when it boots up?


Will

 

[whatever3]

according to the onscreen (built-in?) menu, the monitor should support up to 85 Hz, but i'm not sure at what resolution. But under my display settings, i get a maximum of 75 Hz. I never set it off 'Optimal' anyway, so i'm not sure what the refresh rate is.

by the way, my resolution, since i bought it, has ben set at 1280x1024 w/32-bit color. Also, i'm using a geforce3 ti500 video card.

 

[DaiShan]

has the monitor been shaken, or droppe recentyl, that doesn't sound good to me...

 

[whatever3]

no, it hasn't been dropped, moved or shakin. in fact, it really hasn't been moved from it's spot for nearly 2 years now...

oh, and apparently there were no problems booting up this morning. and it happened 2x yesterday... so i'm even more confused now.

 

[DaiShan]

sounds like somethin may be loose in there, maybe a loose wire or something causing an incomplete connection at times.

 

[whatever3]

sounds possible. i'll open it up later and take a look.

thanks.

 

[DaiShan]

uhhh, I would be VERY careful when doing that, and wouldn't do it at all unless you know what you are doing, monitors have huge capacitors that are very dangerous and take a while to fully discharge, I would take it to a professional, but there are some people on these boards that could probably tell you what to do if you really felt so inclined.

 

[whatever3]

that's good point. i didn't think of that.... although i have experience tiptoeing (sp?) around capacitors, i have never been inside a monitor before and probably shouldn't take any chances. i will open it to see if anything unusual is in plain sight, but won't investigate any further. thanks.

 

[Willoughbyva]

Sometimes if you put speakers or something with magnets in it near the monitor it will make the monitor act weird, though I don't know if it would make a monitor hiss like you are describing.

Will

EDIT: btw some cards have refreash rate setting problems that could also be the problem. set it at 60hz and see if it still does it.

 

[whatever3]

i've actually been using these speakers for years and never had a problem. usually, if unshielded speakers are on and next to a monitor or tv, it's immediately noticeable. it doesn't build over time (at least, from my own experience). so i don't think it's the speakers (of course, i could be wrong though).

i tried dropping the refresh down to 60 Hz and, man, was it painful on my eyes. its much more stable when i leave it set at 'optimal'. i thought the same thing at first, but noticed there is a setting for 'adapter default'. i just figured 'optimal' is probably safest.... and so far, it seems more stable.

and it didn't happen this morning on boot up. so i'm wondering if it was just a fluke that it happened 2x yesterday. don't know, but i'll continue to look into this.

 

[WarCon]

That hissing might of been high voltage discharge. If you didn't smell anything then it wasn't a cap cooking/leaking. If you are getting high voltage discharge from one of the coils, it might explain the jittery screen. It will probably get worse in high humidity times and might end up being fatal to that monitor.

If you have a reliable shop (trustworthy) in your area, you should take it in and get a professional to look at it. Unless you think its time to get a new one.

 

[whatever3]

that sounds plausible... especially since the weather has been so odd lately. unfortunately, i don't know of any shops in my area though i'm sure there are many. can anyone recommend a shop in the new york city area? i believe there are some sony service centers -- would you recommend one of those? of course, it hardly seems worth it since i only spent $200-$250 on this one...

do you think continued use of this monitor might be dangerous to my computer or my video card?

by the way, thanks for everyone's responses so far! i really appreciate them.

 

[WarCon]

I don't think high voltage can feedback through the control circuitry, but I don't know for sure.

Not sure whether or not it would be worth it. Monitors aren't as expensive as they use to be, but Sony's are still at a premium. If a shop could do something inexpensively then it might be worth it to go to one, but most shops aren't cheap anymore so its hard to say. I wouldn't want to go try and get my monitor repaired and find out after spending a hundred to get it repaired that they didn't do anything to really fix the problem.

JMTC