My monitor started flickering and then completely went black (like it went into sleep mode, but it wasn't sleep mode cause I checked my settings) and because I wasn't sure if it was the graphics card or the monitor itself, I bought a used monitor.
Now the "new" monitor is flickering slightly with with a ghostly horizontal grey line on it. Sometimes half of the screen has like a translucent grey film over it. And sometimes it acts perfectly fine like nothing is wrong but that only lasts a very short while.
When I went to check the driver properties it said that the driver needed to be updated. Well, I was going to update it but the screen started fading out and I couldn't see a lot so I had to restart my computer. It was still doing the same flickering/grey film thing so I went to update the driver and this time it didn't show anything wrong with it at all.
I saw some suggestions about changing the refresh state. Here's my huge concern. If I do anything to this computer and it doesn't work and I can't go and put it back the way it was, I'm stuck. I have no other computer, nor do I have access to any other computer at this time. So, is it a good idea to change the refresh state (which is currently at 60 and I can only go down one more to 56) and if it doesn't work can I go back to the state it was in before I did that, or is it my graphics card that needs to be replaced and I'm pretty much stuck until I can afford to replace it.
Please keep in mind that I am completely computer stupid and I have a hard time understanding the lingo you guys sometimes use so be easy on me.
I don't know if this helps or not but my OS is Windows XP and I've had the computer for just about 10 years now. It was built by my brother who worked for Microsoft at that time and asking him now for help is nearly impossible.
