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I have an old CRT monitor that I just tried connecting to my laptop as an additional display. The display itself works, my windows are replicated there, but anywhere there is text, a white blurry streak starts at that point and continues some two inches to the right. The problem seems the same as the one described in this MajorGeeks thread, but there's no resolution given there either.

I tried restarting the laptop, the white streaks still appear even on the BIOS screen and Windows' bootup sequence. I guess that means it's a hardware level issue, but I'm not sure what kind of issue it could be. I'm ready to dive into the circuitry of it and replace a capacitor or a resistor if someone could give me a good starting point to look for trouble.

I'm probably going to give this away to a local school or something anyway, I just wish to give it in a usable condition since their resources are going to be hugely limited.

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  • Did you degauss it? Oh man, I can't believe I just typed that. THANK YOU. Dec 23, 2013 at 16:52
  • Haha. Yes, old memories kicked in and I did degauss it a few times, didn't help at all.
    – Sundar R
    Dec 23, 2013 at 17:38
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    This is bleed due to a problem with high frequency response. Likely a capacitor has failed somewhere, but kinda hard to guess where. Could also be a failed transistor or diode in the "clamping" circuitry. Ideally you'd want an oscilloscope to debug it. Dec 23, 2013 at 17:38
  • @DanielRHicks Thanks for the response. I don't own an oscilloscope though and it looks like a "basic" model starts at around Rs. 35000 (~$650), definitely outside my budget for this work. If that or getting a professional look into it are the only options I might have to give up on this one for now.
    – Sundar R
    Dec 23, 2013 at 18:33
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    Well, there's the obvious thing of opening up the unit and looking for a cap that is all crusty or appears burned. Sometimes you can detect a shorted cap with an ohmmeter, though it's kinda iffy. And if a cap failed "open" then you can jumper another one across it (of roughly the same uF rating) to see if it makes a difference. (Of course the usual cautions apply re working inside a CRT.) Dec 23, 2013 at 20:07

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