The best thing to do is to troubleshoot yourself if your monitor is defective. try to stay calm, even if the failure puts you in time trouble.

Monitor problem: This is the reason for the faulty display

You turn on your PC and the monitor shows either a faulty image or glitches. Then good advice is expensive because usually neither the manufacturer nor the seller of the devices provides really good support and help. The best thing to do is to troubleshoot yourself if your monitor is defective.

Monitor broken: what to do?

If your monitor shows malfunctions or a complete failure, this is of course annoying. Still, try to stay calm, even if the failure puts you in time trouble. We give you all the tips and tricks for monitoring defects and tell you the best way to proceed.

Defective or dead pixels: dark spots, shadows, wandering dots

Pixel damage is due to these causes:

• shock and vibration.

• You dropped the screen.

• It was damaged during a move/transport.

• Pixel errors also appear as a sign of aging.

A very simple tip is to gently touch or massage the pixel imperfections. You have to be really gentle when doing this, or you might make the problem worse:

Very gently press against the pixel disruption with a finger. If you have rather rough hands, it is worth using a Q-tip or a rounded pen tip.

Gently rub the dead pixels. Sometimes the pixels in the defective area can be compensated for or set in motion.

This tip usually only works for minor faults. Unfortunately, if entire cracks or displacements (after severe shocks) appear, the defects can be permanent.

If switching on and off and gently pressing brings no results, the monitor remains defective and you have to live with the disturbance. Maybe you're lucky too because some pixel errors disappear by themselves after a while.

Dead pixels sometimes tend to expand or wander. However, no PC expert, no matter how experienced, can tell you when and whether this will happen.

If you have pixel errors and colour thresholds or shadows on the outside of the display, you can make them disappear in a dark frame by adjusting the screen resolution and continue to enjoy your screen for a while.

Monitor defective: Flickering or stuttering screen

Many LCD TFT monitors today only have a comparatively short service life. After a few years, the picture begins to flicker, they switch off temporarily or completely during operation and can have starting difficulties.

The cause is usually used and defective capacitors in the monitor. Other wearing parts are the signal processor, the backlight or the connection cable.

The big PC crawling: Thunderstorm creatures in the monitor

The thrips are also called regionally thunderstorm animals, flickers or little weather spirits. These insects, which are often only a millimetre or two long, love anything that glows.

Due to the small size, they can get inside through ventilation slots or through the frame of the monitor. There they crawl around in search of the ultimate light source. So if you see a narrow, wandering pixel error, it could also be a thunderstorm animal in the monitor.

In this case, do not press against the animal, otherwise, you will crush it and the stain will remain! You can try to evict the guest from the screen by gently tapping on the top edge.

Or you can use a simple trick: turn off the computer and darken the room completely. Then place an alternative light source near the monitor for the thunderstorm creature (eg a small bedside lamp or a flashlight). So the thunderstorm creature should leave your monitor soon.

Your screen stays completely black?

You turn on your PC, but the screen shows no picture even after a long wait. Then you have to find out whether the monitor is the cause or whether there is another defect.

• Check your PC first. is he walking

If you hear the familiar buzzing and humming, check all the plugs.

• Are you sure?

• do they wobble

• Can a cable be defective, kinked or severed (craftsmen, children or pets)?

If in doubt, unplug all plugs, examine the cables carefully, and then plug them back in.

Still don't have a picture? Then continue with these steps:

Did you have another output device connected to your PC? Then the output setting might still be on a television or a projector.

Test the connection by pressing the Windows key + P several times. The PC searches the possible connections and should have found the connected monitor after a few presses.

If that doesn't bring the desired success, you test other connections for the monitor according to your possibilities: USB, HDMI, DVI.

Check the functionality of the monitor. Is the status light next to the power button on? Can you access the settings by pressing the menu button on the screen?

If the operating indicator lights up, carry out the next check with a flashlight. If you see the picture when you shine the light directly onto the monitor, the backlight of the monitor is defective.

You can replace them yourself with a bit of skill (tutorials on the web) or have a workshop do it for you.

The last two measures are a slight shaking of the monitor. This can lose contact.

Then turn off the entire system and restart everything.

If your monitor remains defective, you must either test another monitor on your PC or connect the monitor to another PC or your laptop. This is the only way to find out for sure whether the defect is on the monitor or on the PC.

If the monitor is defective, it is worth changing the connection cable to make sure that the monitor itself has really given up the ghost.

Monitor defective: When is this a guarantee case?

Most new computers or monitors come with at least a one-year warranty. If the warranty is still active, you must contact the seller of the device.

Either the repair or even the replacement (in the case of a defect that is not your fault) is free of charge or you are offered the repair in a service workshop.

But be careful: many screen defects are considered unprofitable when it comes to repairing them. If the monitor is defective and it is not a real warranty case, the dealers and manufacturers will usually leave you out in the rain.

Then you have to take action yourself.

Monitor broken: who repairs screens?

• Even after several attempts, the display no longer shows an image.

• The monitor also stays black on another PC/laptop.

• The image froze completely during operation and has been hanging ever since.

• Stains and pixel damage massively disrupt the display.

• Horizontal and vertical lines render the image unusable.

• The screen flickering never stops.

• The monitor only shows a blank white or black screen.

Despite all these obvious defects, an expensive and high-quality screen can still be repairable. Even with cheaper models, check-in in a specialist workshop can be worthwhile. The professionals usually see very quickly where the actual cause of the error lies and can tell you whether repairs are worthwhile.

The capacitors can usually be replaced very cheaply.

Broken signal processors are expensive spare parts. In most cases, the repair is not worthwhile in this case.

If the background lighting is defective (only for monitors without TFT and LED background lighting), the ballast, the inverter, can also be defective. The inverter is a small circuit board that can be quickly replaced by a specialist company.

In the meantime, small but fine repair shops have established themselves in almost every larger city. There, PC freaks tinker and tinker with passion. The prices are reasonable and you often get better and more customer-friendly service than with the large authorized workshops. You can find good addresses online or in PC forums.

We hope these tips have helped you and you can soon enjoy your PC to the fullest again!