Monitor too dark

First of all, I must say that everyone here is my hero! You've answered so many questions and taught me so many things and I'm eternally grateful and wish we could have a Geek Picnic somewhere.

Okay, here's a problem for you. My monitor (leftover Gateway monitor with an EMachine tower) is and always has been too dark. So dark that I can never view pics on it. I have adjusted the contrast/bright buttons on the monitor itself and even tried lightening it through a program called "NVidea/NView" but it only lightens up the monitor when watching a DVD.

Any suggestions? It's been an annoyance for 4 years and I never found a solution, but I thought you might. I never know what my publishing is going to look like because of the huge difference from my monitor to the print out. I have Windows XP and now to get true color, I need a Mac....but I don't care about the color as much as the brightness of the monitor.

Thanks again.
Stephanie

 

hrm... you're definitely sure the monitor is too dark, right? it's possible that the monitor has some hardware issues that can only be fixed by opening it up (which you should NEVER do unless you specialize in this sort of thing). if you're using windvd, the program has an internal function that may default in having an overly bright display (i've seen that on my lcd before when using windvd), which gives the illusion that it's fixed. unfortunately, i don't know how to fix these things:-/ but at least you know the problem now.

 

I don't know if you have this or have tried it, but in the monitors onscreen display (OSD), do you have a setting there for Kelvin degrees?

It normally gives you a choice of settings from 9300, 6500, 5000, and USER.

You could also try the Deguass button.

If you don't have them and have tried all the other settings, then your monitor might have seen better days.

 

My monitor has been too dark the day we got it. We always thought people were dumb and didn't brighten their pics and when I would upload my dig.pix they I would have to brighten each one of them...talk about a pain in the rear. But then when I would get them back from Ofoto, they would be over-exposed, so I realized that it was our monitor.

I'll try doing the things that Insomniac suggested, however, I do recall doing that years ago. Will let you know what happens. Seems like I need to be asking for a Flat Screen Monitor from Santa this year.

 

Hi Stephanie I googled this up from Gateway. It's not quite your problem but similar enough that the solution they reccommend might help . . . maybe.
Gateway monitor help
Bill

 

Hey Bill, I've seen this before and no luck. It's okay - I've lived with it for this long, I can wait until we get a new one eventually Thanks as always.

 

Steph, Just out of curiosity, can you try another graphics card from another working PC? You may have to load the associated driver with the new card as well, though. Who knows? Might not be the monitor.

Also check out http://tinyurl.com/3ad99 Haven't tried it myself, so no guarantees, but read a good report on it. Bazza

PS: Maybe try another monitor? Baz

===

 

Thanks so much for the software program recommendation. I can't wait to try it. I'll let you know if it was successful.

 

Two suggestions:
1)
Search the web for:
nokia monitor test.
Its a free program that's very good.
If you can't find it, I can send it to you. Or perhaps MG would be interested.
Note: you have to use the mouse only to navigate , it doesn't take KB input
IT'll show you if your monitor is displaying the whole spectrum.

2) Try a different graphics card.
One problem is that every mfr has a different idea of what RGB means ;-)
As my own example of this, I bought a new graphics card to be able to run Celestia. The graphics were so dark on the new card as to make it unusable.
My new, somewhat expensive 32MB (pretty good for 2 yrs ago) graphics card was a waste!
I swapped in another card and it worked (more than outlines became visible).

 

The Nokia monitor test that morlok was speaking of can be found here at MajorGeeks:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download960.html