Vertical lines on startup logo

[pakp]

When Win 2000 is starting up and I see the animated startup logo, there
is some blue vertical lines moving over the logo. It is a relatively
new install and I have not changed anything related to the logo. There
is no problem with the graphics in windows, it is only in the startup
logo that has the problem.

The computer has a GeForce 256 graphics card, 500 MHz pentium III CPU
and 128 MB RAM.

 

[Jim Howes]

When Win 2000 is starting up and I see the animated startup logo, there
is some blue vertical lines moving over the logo. It is a relatively
new install and I have not changed anything related to the logo. There
is no problem with the graphics in windows, it is only in the startup
logo that has the problem.

It may just be a reaction by your monitor (a cheap LCD monitor??) to the refresh
rate used by the boot screen, which at a rough guess is 640x480@60Hz (But I
could be entirely wrong about that, but someone will know). In which case it is
not a software problem, just a hardware incompatibility.

Try changing the size of your display in Control panel -> Display -> Settings.
(If you have carefully arranged icons on your desktop, you probably want to do
this from another user account to avoid messing up your icon placement) and see
if you can reproduce the problem once the system boots. If so, then it is just
hardware compatibility, and not really worth worrying about.
(We have an LCD display here which really does not like doing 87Hz Interlaced,
although it tries, in a amusing, break-dancing fashion)

 

[WinField]

I'm curious about the statement you made below.

Jim Howes wrote:

[snippage]

(We have an LCD display here which really does not like doing 87Hz Interlaced,
although it tries, in a amusing, break-dancing fashion)

Computers use NON-interlaced video, or so I thought. How are you
driving your LCD computer monitor interlaced?

And why would you run an LCD monitor @ 87 Hz? ... ( because you can,
right) :~P

I can run my LCD monitor @ 60 Hz with no noticeable flicker or
eyestrain. I could NOT do this on my Sony CRT monitor without it
annoying me. That's another advantage LCD's have over CRT's (or so I
thought).

curious in pixel land,
- winfield

 

[Jim Howes]

I'm curious about the statement you made below.

Jim Howes wrote:

[snippage]

(We have an LCD display here which really does not like doing 87Hz
Interlaced,
although it tries, in a amusing, break-dancing fashion)

Computers use NON-interlaced video, or so I thought.

In ye olden days, 87Hz Interlaced was fairly common for 1024x768.

Here at $WEBUILDWEIRDSTUFF, Some of our embedded boards date from such days, and
only have video memory bandwidth sufficient for such a mode.

1024x768 @ 87Hz interlaced pumps 45 megapixels/sec at the screen.
1024x768 @ 60Hz non-interlaced pumps 65 megapixels/sec
The horrible graphics system on our old boards maxed out at 800x600 @ 72Hz
(48kHz Hsync) which is a 50 MHz dot clock. More than that and the memory starts
to crap out, and interesting (but not very useful) effects happen.
The chip is technically capable of 1024x768, but wouldn't advertise it. We had
to tweak several registers ourselves, and I calculated a set of frame timings
that would fit, allowing the customer to get all of his data on screen at once
in a 1024x768 frame. Worked nicely, until they bought themselves a shiny new
LCD monitor...
(Luckily, we don't have to do this any more; hardware has moved on from the
days where if I tried to set a silly refresh rate, I might have generated high
doses of X-rays... ;-)

How are you
driving your LCD computer monitor interlaced?

I'm driving it nuts, that's what I'm doing. The spec sheet says the panel can
do it, however the panel does not want to agree.

And why would you run an LCD monitor @ 87 Hz? ... ( because you can,
right) :~P

I can run my LCD monitor @ 60 Hz with no noticeable flicker or
eyestrain. I could NOT do this on my Sony CRT monitor without it
annoying me. That's another advantage LCD's have over CRT's (or so I
thought).

Generally, lower refresh rates seem to work better with LCD, compared to CRT.
It also means that you are pumping less pixels through your video card, which
probably lowers the temperature a bit..

However, the OP said he was getting some kind of interference pattern; I've
seen some cheap LCD panels (and some Dell panels) react oddly at some
combinations of dot clock and refresh rates.

Jim