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So a coworker calls me over to his desk this morning and says something is wrong with his monitor. I get there and it looks like a burned in image but it is flickering strangely. Power cycle, leave unplugged, fiddle with cables, left scratching my head and assume I'll have to buy him a new screen... Fast forward a few hours, MY screen starts flickering (same exact model) and when it stops there's an image of a spreadsheet I had open "burned" and flickering over everything I look at. Just like the other screen the problem is worst on the left side of the screen until about half way when the image starts to look perfect. Strange, and a really weird coincidence to happen to both screens on the same day. The screen image persists though a reboot and you can see it during POST. You can only make out the spreadsheet on a dark background, a light one is tinted red but there is no sign of the spreadsheet.

Ghosted Spreadsheet:


Red tint "missing" lines, no sign of spreadsheet:

Second monitor, same screen image, no problem:


Bad screen:

Second monitor:


Since I started typing I noticed that the ghosting or burn in has slowly changed to whatever was left on the screen for a few minutes.


Weird...

Perhaps it's a GPU problem?

confusedpenguin wrote:

Perhaps it's a GPU problem?

I'd bet it's just image persistence on the monitor. This is also different than burn-in which permanently degrades pixels.

@drfish: What kind of screens are these? Certain kinds of IPS screens are known for this issue. I've seen it on laptops before, such as the 2013 Acer Aspire S7. It happens with certain colors over other ones (for example, the S7's greens were terribly more persistent than the blues or reds), but I wonder if it can be mitigated by using some sort of LCD overdrive setting in the monitor...

Anyway, nothing is really "wrong" with your setup, but persistence is very annoying and can differ from panel to panel. Any chance of exchange or return?

EDIT: I just saw you noted flickering... that's very odd and inconsistent with my guessing above. Does the whole screen flicker or just the persistent image?

They are HP ZR2330w - and they are on two completely different systems, one is using DP and the other DVI. It's almost like the screens are missing horizontal lines, but it doesn't go across the whole screen. The flickering isn't like on and off flickering, it's rolling like on an old CRT but just very faintly...

Something is definitely wrong, just so weird it would hit two completely independent screens within hours of one another... If it was just one I'd just say "it's busted" and never give it a second thought. I wish I could take better pictures of it.

I've seen screen-related weirdness from voltage surges before, but then I'd expect it to affect both screens on a system, not just one.

Start isolating components by swapping one at a time, and logic will prevail.

Chrispy_ wrote:

Start isolating components by swapping one at a time, and logic will prevail.

X2 -Pretty sure this is a power issue, but i would follow Chrispy's advice, if i were you.

Gotta admit, at first , all I could see was the moire pattern in the images, but i think i can see what OP is talking about now. I'll echo Chrispy_'s advice.


Off topic, but when I read the thread title it reminded me of a PCCHIPS motherboard my uncle ordered way back when, and when installed and powered on for the first time, I was like "Huh. There's a bright LED next to the CPU socket. Neat! Wait...what's that smell?". One of the Voltage regulators actually caught fire, and the "LED" was a little flame.

And that's how I know what burning silicon smells like.

/Not so cool story, bro.

Hz so good wrote:

Off topic, but when I read the thread title it reminded me of a PCCHIPS motherboard my uncle ordered way back when, and when installed and powered on for the first time, I was like "Huh. There's a bright LED next to the CPU socket. Neat! Wait...what's that smell?". One of the Voltage regulators actually caught fire, and the "LED" was a little flame.

The original floppy drives for the Apple II used an unkeyed ribbon cable to carry both the power and data signals. Plugging it in backwards and applying power would blow little square holes in the tops of a couple of chips on the floppy drive's logic board as the dies instantly vaporized. I worked part-time in a PC shop back then; we got a lot of drives brought in to the service department with this particular type of damage.

Hz so good wrote:

And that's how I know what burning silicon smells like.

Not sure if you were smelling the silicon or the epoxy that MOSFET packages tend to be made of. Probably a little of both!

just brew it! wrote:

The original floppy drives for the Apple II used an unkeyed ribbon cable to carry both the power and data signals. Plugging it in backwards and applying power would blow little square holes in the tops of a couple of chips on the floppy drive's logic board as the dies instantly vaporized. I worked part-time in a PC shop back then; we got a lot of drives brought in to the service department with this particular type of damage.

Huh. I didn't know that. When we weren't using the Apple IIs at school to play Oregon Trail, we used them in the computer lab. My BFF and I figured out how to make a fake disk formatting utility in AppleBasic (or whatever) as a prank, that would make the drive LED flash, and made the drive head spin, like it was actually doing something. Freaked our teacher out. He put his grade diskette in, and when he ran the program, it spit out whatever text we used, and all inputs = yes. First time I'd ever heard a grown man shrieking like a cheerleader, because he thought it his grade disk was toast. Once we calmed him down, he congratulated us, and gave us both A's for the semester.

/And yet I hate programming. Go figure.
//Sorry for going off-topic. I'll stop now.

Yep, image persistence. I get this from time to time on my work Dell 2007WFP's. The cure is to spend about an hour a day on imgur.com. At least that's what I tell my boss. The HP monitors can have this issue too, but the good news I've never seen it persist for very long.

My solution is to have a colorful screensaver run for a few minutes before the monitor goes to sleep. I have mine set for 7 minutes screensaver, 10 minutes sleep timer on the monitor, and I haven't had a persistent image for a while now. I did just replace one of my 2007WFP's with a Dell U2414H (fabulous screen, if anyone is interested), so I'll keep an eye on it. Hah, get? Coral?

They're totally shot, nothing to be done to fix them, worst part is sometimes they go back to working normally for a couple seconds to a couple minutes at time before going back. They were in warranty though so as of today I am the proud new owner of two Z23i displays. I gave my good screen to my coworker and took the new screens for myself. HP was wicked fast, they processed my warranty claim and shipped the new screens the same day (no questions asked) and I got them this morning.