Question

in the past few weeks i'll be looking at something on my computer when all of a suddedn my screen goes completely whit with lines across it. the first few times it would go back to normal after about a minute. today it happened twice and it wouldn't go back to normal. i have to manually shut down and restart. Can you help? thanks.

Answer

From your first description of the problem it sounds like a hardware issue. However hardware issues generally will not resolve themselves by rebooting the computer. Therefore we first recommend you download the latest drivers for this computer as it could a driver related issue.

You can find links to video card manufacturers web pages through the below link.

http://www.computerhope.com/drivers/video.htm

If this does not resolve your issue it's possible it could still be a hardware issue, such as a bad monitor and/or video card. First, verify the connection from the back of the monitor to the computer is firmly connected. Second, if the connection looks good try a different monitor on the computer. If a different monitor does not exhibit the same issue it's likely your monitor is failing. If the different monitor has the same issue unfortunately it's likely your video card is defective.