Monitor Issue: Is hurting my eyes

[Angelcurio]

My monitor was damaged a couple of days ago, and my father gave me a 19 inchs CRT one. Now, after i installed the monitor, i notice that my eyes feel tired extrememly fast. The resolution is set in 1024*768.

I put the brightness level into zero, and the contrast into 50% percent and my eyes still hurt.

I guess it has something to do with refresh rate, even though i dont know which is the correct refresh rate for my monitor.

I changed the resolution to 800*600 in the meantime, in that resolution my eyes does not hurt as much.

[digitalwanderer]

Sounds like your refresh rate is at 60Hz which is a REAL eye-killer, try setting it to 85Hz. That's a pretty safe setting for any 19" monitor at the resolutions you're at.

60Hz sucks dude, you have my fullest sympathies. :(

[Angelcurio]

At 800*600 and 60hz is not bad at all, but in 1024*768 my eyes hurt a lot.

I tried 85 hz in 1024/768 but they still hurt, not as much as before, but still hurt :???:

[BRiT]

Time to replace it with a quality LCD.

[DudeMiester]

I've been running 1280x1024 @ 60Hz for ages, and while I can notice a slight flicker if I concentrate, it's never bothered me. In fact, it's probably a good thing, since if it did bother you it would force you to look away now and then, thus sparing your eyesight. I know in my case, I have a friend who uses computers less then me, yet his eyes are shot and mind are still something like 20/15.

[chavvdarrr]

ANY 19" monitor should be able to support 1024x768@85Hz and 800x600@100Hz.
Hell, if its any good it should handle 1024x768@100Hz. (or even 1152x868)
I personally can't tell the difference between 85 and 100Hz sitting in front of monitor. But if I stay whole day... 85 gives me headache in th evening, 100 is fine.
As for eyes hurting... Are you short-sighted?
That seems the answer for me - 60Hz at any resolution is awful, if you say that 800x600@60 is better for you than 1024x768@85... then believe me your problem is not the refresh rate... but the size of screen text/icons and the distance between you and the monitor.
easy check - set 1024x768@100/85 and set using large icons and large text, if that feels better - time to check your eyes...

[_xxx_]

Which monitor is that? Most brand manufacturers have drivers for their monitors which will give you the correct refresh rates. Or at least a specsheet which will show you all refresh rates you can use in given resolution. Needless to say, you always need the highest possible.

And 60Hz is absolutely not acceptable.

[Tim Murray]

60Hz gives me a migraine within 5 minutes. As in, I have to lie down with my eyes closed or I start vomiting.

It's a bad thing.

[digitalwanderer]

60Hz gives me a migraine within 5 minutes. As in, I have to lie down with my eyes closed or I start vomiting.

It's a bad thing.
I'm not that bad, but whenever I'm doing a re-install I have to be careful how much I look at the screen until I get the viddy drivers loaded. :oops:

[Angelcurio]

My monitor is IBM branded, its maximum refresh rate is 85hz.

Right now i am posting from my job, here i have a small ´15 crt monitor with the resolution set on 800*600 and its really nice, my eyes feel really confortable with it.

I tried setting my home monitor at 85hz and even though it hurts a lot less, it still gives me headaches after a while :mad:

[_xxx_]

Max. 85Hz means mostly that it has them with the lowest resolution, the higher you go the less the refresh rate. It probably doesn't do those 85Hz you're trying at all, but falls back on 60.

[Blazkowicz]

what's the monitor model name / product number, so we can look at its page on the IBM site to know the frequency specs (IBM is pretty great for the support it offers, you'll be able to find the monitor driver without problem as well).
Unless it's really low end it should do 1024 at 100Hz and 800x600 at 120Hz (my IBM G76 17" does that), or more.
/edit : when your monitor is seen as "plug'n'play monitor" by windoze, max refresh can be limited to 85Hz ;)

and yes, maybe we can blame your sight. or you're sitting too close to that screen (19" begins to be pretty big IMO.)
sometimes I feel being ~one foot away from my 17" (not very big desk) is a bit of a discomfort.
Room's lighting is especially important as well, it has to be lit enough and you shouldn't have nasty reflections on the screen.

then my advice about brightness / contrast : there's only one right setting for brightness, to set it right you put both settings at 100% then you decrease brightness till the exact point where black becomes really black. then lower contrast according to your taste.

[Angelcurio]

This is the monitor in question:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-4XDQAK

[Blazkowicz]

wow, pretty great screen. from the specs I can guarantee you it's able to do 1024 at 120Hz, if your system doesn't allow more than 85Hz get the .inf file here http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-4VPSMK

it says it's for win95 and 98, but it works anyway, monitor drivers are'nt real drivers. you might have to install it by hand in device manager.

[digitalwanderer]

monitor drivers are'nt real drivers
:lol:

Doesn't powerstrip have an option to write some new monitor drivers for you? I remember doing it a few times a few years back to get a few refresh rates on an old Cyberlink display.

[Angelcurio]

wow, pretty great screen. from the specs I can guarantee you it's able to do 1024 at 120Hz, if your system doesn't allow more than 85Hz get the .inf file here http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-4VPSMK

it says it's for win95 and 98, but it works anyway, monitor drivers are'nt real drivers. you might have to install it by hand in device manager.

Wao.

Thanks a lot. Seriously, thanks a lot.

My systen wasnt letting me go beyond 85 hz, but with those drivers now i could set it to 120 hz and its really nice. My eyes are not suffering anymore.

Thanks a lot buddy.

BTW, my mouse is almost flying now :lol:

Offtopic: Now that we are on it, could someone explain me why and how refresh rates are related with headaches and eyes tiring feeling?

[Bludd]

My understanding is that your eyes tries to focus on each field that is drawn because they are drawn so slow. A higher refresh rate makes the field transitions too fast for your eyes, so there is less strain.

[Zapata]

Is the screen flat or curved?

Saludos Amigos Zapata

[Mize]

Wow. Not too many people suffer from 85 Hz. I can accurately guess refresh rates from about 65-75 Hz based on the pain. I'm usually very comfortable at 85Hz. Of course an LCD at 60 Hz is just find thanks to the persistence of the image.

[Angelcurio]

Hi guys. Now i am having another weird problem.

Normally, i dont shut down my pc by clicking start, shut down, etc.

What i normally do is close all aplications and after that i press the power button on the pc case, and it automatically closes everything and shut downs the pc.

In the recent days i have notices that a couple of times i have turned my pc on, and come to realize that the resolution has been reset. It should be at 1024*768, but it appears at 800*600.

Does anyone have an idea of the cause of the problem?

[Cartoon Corpse]

my 19 inch only goes up to 70Hz (i use the hide values that it can't do option in disply tab).

and i frequently set it to 70 then return later to see it at 60.

it doesn't really bother me. and i still have 20/13 vision. if i play for hours on end maybe, but that's just overdoing it i'd guess

i don't get headaches and stuff. though i think i agree with the article i read that said it disturbs your sleep cycle. if im playing till 4am (seldom) im not tired at all UNTIL i turn the pc off, then i can barely get to my bedroom.

[Pete]

Angel, is the monitor still recognized by Windows when you restart? Meaning, if you go to Display Properties > Settings, do you see "IBM P96 on [your video card]"? Or do you see something like "Standard Monitor on [blah]"? If it's the latter, you have to reinstall the monitor .inf (I'd do it through Disp Props > Settings > Advanced > Monitor, so that you can also check the refresh settings) and find a way to make it stick. If you see it correctly listed, then something else is up with your PC, as 800x600 is the default safe setting for WinXP.

How is the monitor connected to your video card, by a regular VGA/DB15 cable, or via a DVI-VGA adapter? What video card are you using?

_xxx_, typically when you see "max refresh" in CRT advertising it's related to the max recommended resolution, not the monitor's actual max refresh rate. Yeah, I'm nitpicking. :P

Cartoon Corpse, you must mean your monitor only goes up to 70Hz at some high res, not 70Hz max at any res. Right? What monitor do you have?

[Sobek]

60hz on a CRT...

Some people are absolutely insane.

[Angelcurio]

Angel, is the monitor still recognized by Windows when you restart? Meaning, if you go to Display Properties > Settings, do you see "IBM P96 on [your video card]"? Or do you see something like "Standard Monitor on [blah]"? If it's the latter, you have to reinstall the monitor .inf (I'd do it through Disp Props > Settings > Advanced > Monitor, so that you can also check the refresh settings) and find a way to make it stick. If you see it correctly listed, then something else is up with your PC, as 800x600 is the default safe setting for WinXP.

How is the monitor connected to your video card, by a regular VGA/DB15 cable, or via a DVI-VGA adapter? What video card are you using?

_xxx_, typically when you see "max refresh" in CRT advertising it's related to the max recommended resolution, not the monitor's actual max refresh rate. Yeah, I'm nitpicking. :P

Cartoon Corpse, you must mean your monitor only goes up to 70Hz at some high res, not 70Hz max at any res. Right? What monitor do you have?

The pc really recognizes my monitor. The only problem is that sometimes it resets the resolution.

And yeah, it is listed on the display settings. The monitor is connected to my video card by a regular VGA cable.

My videocard is a Geforce 6600 PCI-E 256 mb.

Any help will be greatly apreciated.

[digitalwanderer]

Do you have the "60Hz override" enabled? I think you need coolbits2 for it, but that might just fix what ails you.

For some idiotic reason WindowsXP tries to always game at 60Hz, you have to usually forcibly override it some how.

(On nVidia & ATi cards, although points to ATi for having it in the controls by default with CCC. Then again it's been a while since I played with nVidia so they may have added it to the default drivers too. )

[Blazkowicz]

actually refresh rate override was shown by default on nvidia drivers, but they hid it from 7x.xx drivers and onwards. So, you either need coolbits, or the first thing I do everytime I've installed nvidia drivers is go into regedit, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\NVTweak , add a DWORD named NvCplDisableRefreshRatePage , and let it at 0.

they say it's hidden because it can cause some problems in rare situations, but that sound like bullshit, it never caused anything for me. I nonetheless still prefer it to ATI's override. ATI only lets you choose one global frequency, so let's take my monitor which can do 800 120Hz, 1024 100Hz, 1152 (or my custom resolution, 1200x900) 85Hz, 1280 75Hz, 1600 65Hz.
Set 100Hz in ATI CCC and you lose the ability to use resolutions > 1024. Set 85Hz, and the lower resolutions can't have more than that. NV allows a different refresh rate for each resolution thus the monitor can do its best at any res.

[Angelcurio]

Angel, is the monitor still recognized by Windows when you restart? Meaning, if you go to Display Properties > Settings, do you see "IBM P96 on [your video card]"? Or do you see something like "Standard Monitor on [blah]"? If it's the latter, you have to reinstall the monitor .inf (I'd do it through Disp Props > Settings > Advanced > Monitor, so that you can also check the refresh settings) and find a way to make it stick.

After double checking the matter i noticed that this is the actual problem. I entered to the display settings and saw that when the problem occurs, it has "standar monitor" as my default on, instead on my IBM p96.

I just resintalled the drivers but still dont know if its going to stick with them. Its there a way to force to it to keep it?

And thank you for the advice.

[Sobek]

Cartoon Corpse...what brand of videocard do you use? If ATI, then Ati Tray Tools is a wonder for forcefully making Windows stick to certain refresh rates.

I basically remove all available refresh rates, and just manually add all the modes I want to use, then reset the display driver. Once that's done, Windows behaves quite nicely. Otherwise, i'd find that i'd add a 'forced' refresh rate of, say, 1280x1024 @ 120hz, and find that after quitting any OpenGL games, Windows would force it back down to 85hz and lock out the ability to change the refresh rate until I restarted. Just using those modes that I want cleared this up...

As for Coolbits and forcing refresh rates on Nvidia cards...I swear, it never just 'works'. Some games refuse to load, others refuse to run at the forced refresh rates, some games run like absolute crap because Coolbits just causes problems for them. It drove me mad when I was stuck on a 6600gt, having to modify settings every time I wanted to play something. :mad:

[Pete]

You're quite welcome, AC. I feel your eyes' pain. :smile:

How are you installing the monitor .inf, via Device Manager or via Display Properties? Did you try restarting Windows immediately after installing the .inf?

Ah, is the monitor on when you boot the PC? B/c if it isn't, Windows may default to "standard monitor."