Windows Vista DirectX problem

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kafka

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My monitor is showing flickering lines. When I play Age of Empires the flickering continues and, after a while, the AOE screen disappears and is replaced by a black rectangle at the top left of the screen. Pressing the Windows button on the keyboard temporarily returns the AOE screen but the problem recurs a minute or so later.

This happened originally in January but I was able to fix it by deleting a line in the registry and restarting the computer. Unfortunately I didn't keep a note of the line I deleted. I am assuming that Windows replaced the line when I rebooted. I should mention that in my attempts to fix the problem back in December I was able to determine that the problem related to DirectX 11 (I have Vista Business).
 
Video Problem

The problem returned yesterday. In frustration I googled something like "video problem" and got a Microsoft help site with advice specifically relating to screen flicker. It suggested de-gaussing the monitor and also informed me that flickering can be caused by electronic interference or tangled cables. This sounded promising as the problem wasn't continuous (as I assumed it would be if I had a faulty video card). With some difficulty I managed to deg-gauss the monitor and, sure enough, the flickering stopped. Unfortunately Age of Empires still dropped out. I will now check out the state of entanglement of mu cables and move my wireless phone further away from the monitor.
 
my guess would be graphics card overheating, although with something like AOE I wouldn't suspect it needed a "real gaming" card

Hardware details would help us a bit ;)


:user:
 
Hopefully I've attached hardware details. As I said before, the problem has resolved itself (for the moment) after I degaussed the monitor. Maybe it's just a coincidence?
 

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  • Hardware.webp
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ah, not a games machine then ... ;)

What is the monitor called?


:user:
 
The monitor is an LG Studioworks 710S CRT 15". It's rather old, a carry over from my last computer.
 
kafka said:
The monitor is an LG Studioworks 710S CRT 15". It's rather old, a carry over from my last computer.
Click to expand...
Well, I think you know that this is one of your bottlenecks, and just to let you know, you are straining the hell out of it by running it at 1024 X 768, it will fail if you continue to run it at that resolution.

800 x 600 is the default display resolution of a 15" monitor. ;)


:user:
 
Thisi was the default resolution when I bought the computer, I have never changed it. According to Windows Help the ideal resolutions for CRT monitors are:

Resolution based on monitor size
Monitor size

Recommended resolution

15-inch monitor

1024 × 768

17- to 19-inch monitor

1280 × 1024

20-inch and larger monitor

1600 × 1200
 
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