Blur Busters Forums

I buy and used benqxl 2546 for about 3 months, my computer before that have Virus really bad. Sometimes the monitor turns black and returns to normal. So i'm worry about my monitor is infected with a virus from the computer. Can that happen?
Everybody someone know please let me know! Thank you.

No.
Is your power cabled pluged all the way in? It could be a lose cable, especially if you experience disconnects when you're tilting or pivoting the screen.

no

Thanks guys! Can you guys let me know why monitor(benqxl2546) can't be infected with a virus? I appreciate it! S2

zivko wrote:No.
Is your power cabled pluged all the way in? It could be a lose cable, especially if you experience disconnects when you're tilting or pivoting the screen.

I do pluged all the way in.

A virus is a program, and that means it is executed on a CPU and loaded from RAM. The monitor does not have an accessible CPU or RAM.

RealNC wrote:The monitor does not have an accessible CPU or RAM.

So what's inside Monitor to control display to turn on or off pixels? I mean, there must be something to receive information from the computer and control the Monitor display according to that information. I just want to know to get more knowledge. Thanks so much for your answer! S2

longjeang wrote:So what's inside Monitor to control display to turn on or off pixels? I mean, there must be something to receive information from the computer and control the Monitor display according to that information. I just want to know to get more knowledge. Thanks so much for your answer! S2

I've seen random flickering monitor blackouts like this happen before.
Everytime it has ever happened, it was not a virus.

Can be hardware defect.
Also, hardware defects are not a virus.

Can be cable defect.
Also, cable defects are not a virus.

Can be radiofrequency interference (RFI)
Also, RFI are not a virus.

Can be damaged contact in graphics card's port (e.g. DisplayPort)
Also, damaged ports are not a virus.

Can be damaged contact in monitor's graphics port (e.g. DisplayPort)
Also, damaged ports are not a virus.

Can be out-of-spec signal timings.
Also, out-of-spec signal timings are not a virus.

Can be malfunction in motion blur reduction mode.
Also, malfunction in motion blur reduction mode are not a virus.
(Many blur reduction modes use a strobe backlight, and if that malfunctions, can cause long black periods or random flickering)

Remedies
- Replace cable (to bypass bad cable)
- Try a different port on your graphics card (to bypass bad port)
- Try a different port on your monitor (to bypass bad port)
- Keep cable away from power cables / power supply / power outlets / power bars / wires inside wall (to bypass RFI)
- Try temporarily turning off DyAc (to bypass malfunction in DyAc motion blur reduction)
- RMA may or may not help (if it's a bad port on monitor, or malfunctioning DyAc), must be 100% sure it's monitor side rather than GPU-side, cable-side, or RFI-side.

longjeang wrote:

RealNC wrote:The monitor does not have an accessible CPU or RAM.

So what's inside Monitor to control display to turn on or off pixels? I mean, there must be something to receive information from the computer and control the Monitor display according to that information. I just want to know to get more knowledge. Thanks so much for your answer! S2

The logic and memory units inside the monitor are not accessible. The information they receive are the video signals. The video signal is not code. It's data that describes the colors of each pixel.

There are some limited instructions that one can send to the monitor (DDC) for changing things like brightness and such. Most monitors don't support that. However, that's not enough to write a virus.

Finally, some monitors do provide access to their firmware through vendor-specific commands. This is why some monitors can be flashed with a new firmware through a normal DVI cable. In theory, a virus could write code to the firmware that way. But that would need to be a very specifically written virus that targets that specific monitor. And it would require a special OS driver that would allow the virus to write to the monitor's firmware. And even then, if a virus would successfully write code to the monitor's firmware, it can't infect anything else after that. The monitor cannot execute code on the computer it's connected to.

This is a very low yield target for a virus, and quite far fetched.

Chief Blur Buster wrote:

longjeang wrote:So what's inside Monitor to control display to turn on or off pixels? I mean, there must be something to receive information from the computer and control the Monitor display according to that information. I just want to know to get more knowledge. Thanks so much for your answer! S2

I've seen random flickering monitor blackouts like this happen before.
Everytime it has ever happened, it was not a virus.

Can be hardware defect.
Also, hardware defects are not a virus.

Can be cable defect.
Also, cable defects are not a virus.

Can be radiofrequency interference (RFI)
Also, RFI are not a virus.

Can be damaged contact in graphics card's port (e.g. DisplayPort)
Also, damaged ports are not a virus.

Can be damaged contact in monitor's graphics port (e.g. DisplayPort)
Also, damaged ports are not a virus.

Can be out-of-spec signal timings.
Also, out-of-spec signal timings are not a virus.

Can be malfunction in motion blur reduction mode.
Also, malfunction in motion blur reduction mode are not a virus.
(Many blur reduction modes use a strobe backlight, and if that malfunctions, can cause long black periods or random flickering)

Remedies
- Replace cable (to bypass bad cable)
- Try a different port on your graphics card (to bypass bad port)
- Try a different port on your monitor (to bypass bad port)
- Keep cable away from power cables / power supply / power outlets / power bars / wires inside wall (to bypass RFI)
- Try temporarily turning off DyAc (to bypass malfunction in DyAc motion blur reduction)
- RMA may or may not help (if it's a bad port on monitor, or malfunctioning DyAc), must be 100% sure it's monitor side rather than GPU-side, cable-side, or RFI-side.

Thank you so much for your help! Thank you!