External Monitor COnnected to Laptop flickers

Here is a new one. I got a new BenQ monitor and connected it to my laptop, brilliant, best add-on to my laptop ever., except for one thing. flickering or refresh rate lines.

After days of search, I finally found on google that if i run the laptop on DC the flickering goes away, when I run it off AC the flickering is there, even more weird if i put the laptop into Max Performance mode the flickering is even worse, if I place it in Battery Saving mode the flickering is less.

I found this website that gave me the idea of testing for the AC and DC differences to flicker.

http://mrgnome.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/external-monitor-flicker-laptop-ground-loop-problem-solved/

To be honest I DON'T condone the use of this method as modifying any electrical parts are dangerous, I will re-post again if I find a fix that doesn't require such a big risk.


EDIT: Seems like it is the AC power pack from the laptop, putting noise onto the LCD cause they share the same power board, when using a different board, the problem does not exist.

Now my experiment ideas are using a DVI to HDMI converter adaptor, My laptop only has VGA and HDMI but my screen has VGA and DVI so if I use the DVI cable and monitor and change one side of DVI cable back to HDMI I can use HDMI port for digital signal, hopefully this will reduce the noise impact as it;'s digital signals not analogue. WINNER (brought a $18 adaptor from DickSmithElectronics, DVI-I Female to HDMI Male)

Other idea is looking into getting special surge boards that split this noise and interference, don't know what they are called or if they even exist.

Lastly use an adaptor to remove the grounder plug, not physically but if you plug the 3 pins into an adaptor with 2 pins it removes the ground pin from working back into the surge board.


EDIT: My power pack died anyway so I went and got a new one, which had 2 pins, so no grounding pin. Fixed the problem with DVI anyway but hey if you have VGA as only option then you can try getting a global power pack to have 2 pins rather then buying a plug to change 3 to 2 pins. =) cheers hope this helps.