OdSamsung 226cw behaving oddly--should I worry?

[Wynne]

I bought my monitor a little under 4 years ago. Never acted up before, but lately it's been very grumpy about coming out of standby. Here are the things I've noticed:

--When the computer has been in standby/sleep mode, it will dim and flicker a bunch of times before dying altogether. Rebooting fixes the problem (though today I tried turning the monitor off and on again about 5 times; it began by continually flickering, then going to what I noticed was not actual blackness but an extremely dim level, too dim to work with. Then the 5th try caused it to stay on rather than flickering/dying.)

--If I turn the computer on without having turned the monitor on first, the monitor will flicker and in each stage of booting up (each time the screen changes) it will die, then revive, then die. When Windows starts, it is usually fine, though if I'm a few seconds too late with turning it on it will generally just stay at about 50% brightness and eventually die.

Oddly, these are the only problems I'm having. Everything else seems to be completely fine. I guess at this point I'm just wondering... should I worry? Is there something I should be doing differently in the monitor's settings or in Windows' power options, or should I be preparing to buy a new monitor when this one dies on me? It's basically my first flat panel monitor, and I'm not exactly a tech genius here, so I know just enough to be nervous and not enough to know how to go about fixing such a problem. This didn't happen previously. Could it have been an ATI driver update conflict or something which caused this? Do I have to do some sort of annoying uninstall/reinstall thing? I would really appreciate any theories or answers on what's happening here.

If it's relevant, my video card is an ATI 5700 series and I'm working with an ASUS PQ5Pro motherboard, an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 4 Gigs of RAM and a 64-bit Windows 7 OS.

 

[jaguarskx]

I would say that you backlight is dying and needs to be replaced.

There could be something wrong with the electronics but it's doubtful since you said the monitor is not actually dark, but dim. You can take to a repair shop to find out how much it will cost to repair. I think replacement parts themselves will probably run you $40 plus labor costs. You might be looking at around $90 to get it repaired by someone.

That's about 40% - 50% for a decent new monitor especially with Black Friday coming up (if you live in the US). Therefore, unless you are pretty handy, I think your money is better spent on a new monitor.

 

[Grommy]

This flickering happened recently to my 3 and a half year old 226cw and turned out to have a very cheap fix, although it was a little hands on. The capacitors were bad on mine and had to be replaced. Following the instructions on this thread made it easy.
http://www.overclock.net/t/636236/samsung-226bw-flickers-for-a-few-minutes-when-powering-on
Take a look at this video also
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKWCFopDDnk
My 226cw required one 330μF 25V and five 820μF 25V capacitors. Due to my local Maplins not having these and me not wanting to spend £10 on postage, I got one 470 and five 1000 microfarad 25 volt capacitors instead for £2.35 which are working great.