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CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide

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SIM Check out the excellent “DxDiag” Show! and Click! simulations over

in the Chapter 17 section of the hub: totalsem.com/100x. These will get you

prepared for any performance-based questions CompTIA might throw at you.

Troubleshooting Video

People tend to notice when their monitors stop showing the Windows

desktop, making video problems an urgent issue for technicians. Users might

temporarily ignore a bad printer or other device, but will holler like crazy

when the screen doesn’t look the way they expect. To fix video problems

quickly, the best place to start is to divide video problems into two groups:

video cards/drivers, and monitors.

Troubleshooting Video Cards and Drivers

Video cards rarely go bad, so the majority of video card/driver problems are

bad or incompatible drivers or incorrect settings. Always make sure you have

the correct driver installed. If you’re using an incompatible driver, you might

get a Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) as soon as Windows starts to load. A

system with a suddenly corrupted driver usually doesn’t act up until the next

reboot. If you reboot a system with a corrupted driver, Windows will do one

of the following: go into SVGA mode, blank the monitor (no image on

screen), lock up, or display a garbled screen with weird patterns, incorrect

color patterns, or a distorted image. You might get oversized images and

icons. You might even see a 3-D image with amazingly distorted geometry.

Whatever the output, reboot into Safe mode and roll back or delete the

driver. Keep in mind that more advanced video cards tend to show their

drivers as installed programs under Programs and Features, so always check

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