PC causes monitors to go bad

[Tacks]

The lady that does our invoices in our office keeps blowing up her monitors. Is there anything I can try to look at that would cause this to happen? This is the third monitor that has gone bad in the last 6 weeks. Would we be better off just getting her a new PC instead?

[Martrae]

Is she stacking things on top of the monitor?

[Tacks]

no

[Evermore]

any details? and check the line voltage

[Tikker]

what kind of monitor?

I'm going to assume they're CRT, but what brand, size, etc?

is it plugged into a power strip?

does she have a fern sitting on the shelf right above it that she waters daily? (ps, i've seen this one like 8 times now )

[Lionking]

What kind of monitor: CRT? LCD?

Proper ventilation?

Plugged into a quality surge suppressor / battery backup unit?

[Lionking]

Damn you Tikker

[Tacks]

It's an HP 7500 CRT 17 inch monitor.

It's plugged into an APC surge protector.

Nothing near it (ceiling included) would drip onto it or anything of that sort.

[Tikker]

can you stick in a different video card to see if that fixes the issue? I can't really imagine that there's a lot of juice flowing out of the VGA port tho

[Tikker]

just had another thought


we had an old guy here who had an electric kettle stashed in his office, and would plug it into the same power bar as his pc. it gave us all kinds of funny problems (no dead monitors tho)

[Tacks]

If anything she may have an electric heater in the surge protector. EDIT: I asked her, she only has an adding machine/printer/pc/monitor plugged into it. She uses the heater in a seperate outlet on the other side of her cubicle.

I doubt we have any vid cards around since I think they're all onboard cards.

[Harrison]

Any strong magnetic sources nearby?

[Tossica]

I'd guess static.

[Tikker]

I'd guess static.

yeah, could be

probably scuffs her feet and gives it a bit of a zap every morning firing it up

[ClakarEQ]

Not sure if it could happen, never seen it myself, but what about hte hertz it's running at. Perhaps something has gotten screwed up such that the hertz are out of spec for the monitor, maybe burning something up over time.

Other bit would be direct sunlight. I've seen folks put monitors on the "sunny side" of the office and burn up a monitor (it is along the same lines of poor venting issues).

my 2cps

[kaharthemad]

If anything she may have an electric heater in the surge protector. EDIT: I asked her, she only has an adding machine/printer/pc/monitor plugged into it. She uses the heater in a seperate outlet on the other side of her cubicle.

I doubt we have any vid cards around since I think they're all onboard cards.

electric heaters can dim voltage. It is possible that it is on a same circuit. best bet. Replace video card and buy a 39.00 battery backup unit to regualte the voltage.