Recently, one of my main workstation monitor 144hz Asus MG248QR broke down and started showing glitching/flickering, static noise and eventually died with no power. I looked up on the internet for possible solutions, some say that capacitors or ICs in the display driver (motherboard) need replacement. I did not have the required tools / components to self repair it, so I switched to a backup monitor which was gathering dust in my closet.
The old one is Samsung SyncMaster SA100 LED monitor which only has VGA input and build quality is abysmal. Also, it has only a single button for adjust screen brightness, contrast and auto adjustment, the button performs multiple functions based on how long it has been pressed and held, unfortunately, the button was broken as well. Samsung has deteriorated the build quality of their TVs and Monitors, to be very honest, I can’t believe I purchased this crap back then.
Now that the backup monitor is on my desk, I tried connecting it to my Graphics Card GPU which is Nvidia GeForce GTX 960, a fairly old but decent card for 1080p resolution, but then I realized that my GPU has no VGA output. Luckily, I had a DisplayPort/HDMI to VGA adapter in my junk drawer with thousand other cables that I’m scared to throw away. Hoarding is bad habit.
I managed to successfully connect the SA100 Monitor to the graphics card using DP/HDMI to VGA adapter, however there was one problem. The screen resolution was set correctly to 1366×768 (720p) but the position of the screen was tilted/pushed to the left side, which caused the monitor to show black bars on the right side. On top of that, the monitor was not readjusting or repositioning the screen automatically. It has an auto-adjustment feature built-in but it didn’t work. I power-cycled the monitor, disconnected and plugged the AC power, removed the 14volt DC adapter jack from the monitor back side too. Nothing seemed to correct the screen position. I even tried changing the resolution from Windows 10 Display Settings and Nvidia Control Panel too.
How I forced my Samsung Monitor to Auto-Adjust Screen Position:
The monitor adjustment problems can be solved by creating a custom resolution and refresh rate using your Graphic card control panel. I have Nvidia GPU, so I used Nvidia Control panel to create it.
- Right Click Desktop > Open Nvidia Control Panel
- Click “Change Resolution” on the Left side
- Now Select your Monitor’s Native Resolution (In my case it was 1366×768 pixels)
- Then click Customize, and click “Create Custom Resoultion“
- From the Timing settings, change Standard dropdown to “Manual“
- Now look at the bottom, you will see “Refresh Rate“, it will be set to 60 Hertz by default and a reference value will be given below as well. For example: (59.000 to 61.000)
- Lower the Refresh rate by 1 Point (hz) to make it 59 hertz
- Click Test, then your monitor will adjust the screen automatically due to a change in the refresh rate. If everything seems correctly aligned, click Yes to save the settings.
- If you see a Blank Screen, press Right Arrow Key and Press Enter, or simply wait 15 seconds, it will switch back to original screen.
This method will probably work on AMD graphic cards as well, I’m pretty sure you can create custom resolution & refresh rate inside AMD Radeon Catalyst Software.
Note: If you set a high refresh rate unsupported by your monitor, it will display a blank screen. We just need to decrease it by 1 point so it detects the change and starts automatic readjustment.
