Small Blue dots on dark images? Vista, x1900xt, vx2025wm

[davidos]

I'm getting small blue flickering dots on dark images ever since i installed Vista (clean). I have a vx2025wm DVI monitor and an x1900xt... This corruption wasn't there when i was using xp...

Can someone please help with suggestions or has anyone had the same problem?

 

[imported_Wolfkin]

Could be just a driver thing.
The next graphics driver (7.2) should be out some time coming week, try it and see if it fixes things.

Can you post an image of the problem? Might help people come up with a solution.
Maybe capture a short video with Fraps and upload it to Youtube.com?

 

[novacthall]

I'm actually having a similar "problem" with my fiance's Viewsonic VX2035WM.

Here are her specs:
Intel Core2Duo E6400
2GB RAM
Radeon X1950XTX (using DVI connects)
Gigabyte 965P-S3 motherboard
Windows XP MCE

A few interesting correlations appear similar between our two systems. First, we're both using DVI, and second, we both have this issue with an X1900 series card hooked up to a Viewsonic monitor. I've noticed several points about the mysterious dots that stick out, though.
1) Likelihood of appearance is highest when the monitor is coming from a dormant state.
2) The dots do not appear harmful to the screen itself, but they sure are a nuisance.
3) Mine are green, actually. I've yet to see blue dots, but it may be a function of some as-yet discovered aspect.

I was playing around with her computer one day and, completely on a whim, upon encountering the green dots switched the desktop color depth to 16-bit. After the black, the desktop flashed back up and, to my surprise, the dots were gone. Puzzling, no doubt, but 16-bit colors just feels so archaic, so I clicked "No" when it asked me if I was sure I wanted to keep these settings. Oddly enough, the dots were gone from the remainder of the time I had the monitor on. I did not get to check later if they had resurfaced, but as a temporary fix, my session was dot-free.

Theories:
1) Handshaking? DVI does quite a bit of voodoo with HDCP, as I understand it, and it's possible that it's missing a communication at some point in the early startup process.
2) DVI cable? I'm hesitant to push this one, though, because I'm assuming you're using the packed-in DVI cable that came with the monitor. Two people with bad DVI cables from the same company with near-identical monitors is a coincidence that seems far-fetched.
3) Drivers? Hey, never hurts to keep those babies updated.

If you've made any progress, davidos, I'd love to bounce ideas back and forth. I've advised her to try the 7.3 Catalyst drivers, which were released not too long ago. I will report our findings.

 

[incompleteunit]

I've had the same problem recently - green and red dots flicker on images. They can be in a browser, or the desktop image, but it's only images, nothing else affected (dragging a part of a window with no image over flickering pixels makes them stop). It peaks a bit after the computer has been turned on after either standby or shutdown, then disappears a while later.

I've got a 7800 GT, XP Pro, VX2025WM, so it would seem that it's an issue with the monitor. I tried updating my graphics drivers, but no change.

 

[novacthall]

I'm posting now post-7.3 catalyst, as well, and I'm now seeing some little red dots. That's new.

I'm going to try my exploit to see if it clears it up.

 

[novacthall]

All clear. But there's got to be a better way. I think you're right, though, incompleteunit. This is clearly a monitor thing.

I'm going to submit the case and this thread to Viewsonic to see if we can get anything done.

 

[novacthall]

As a follow up, I noticed that Viewsonic has two drivers for their monitors available on their website, one signed and the other unsigned. I tried the signed one first, rebooted, and still had the dots. Then I tried the unsigned, rebooted, and no dots! But then I rebooted again and had the dots back. So I really don't know.

If all else fails, I can always get rid of them by popping my color depth, but there's got to be a better way.

 

[incompleteunit]

An update on this issue for anyone who cares:

I got sick of this happening - I had been inclined to ignore it previously since it usually 'peaked' after a few minutes and then subsided. After a while though, it was getting to be pretty constant. This was after an upgrade from a 7800 GT to an 8800 GTS, and a later motherboard/CPU upgrade, and has occured in both XP and Vista, so I figured there's no way it's anything but the monitor. So I called Viewsonic and they gave me an RMA number and a local place to send it to.

I send it in, and a few days later get one of their techs calling me on the phone saying he can't reproduce the issue. Turns out he's trying it on D-SUB instead of DVI, and he goes off to try it out again. Almost a week later I get it back, saying they still can't find a defect. So as a test, I've had it hooked up to the Macbook Pro I got in the summer, and it's been running for a while without displaying the problem at all. I'll hook it back up to my PC in a bit, but it's really weird that it's persisted over two graphics cards and two versions of Windows, and yet seems to vanish on any other computer.

 

[nullpointerus]

Does the problem depend on the refresh rate?

My VX2025vm incorrectly reports max. ref. rate of 75 Hz @ 1680x1050, but this resulted in scrambled screen or "out of range" errors with a variety of different cards and drivers over the past year or so.