You can call it a technical glitch or whatever, horizontal lines on your laptop screen are quite irritating and need a fix as soon as possible.
And because the reasons primarily include hardware and software issues, let us understand why such lines are appearing on your laptop screen and how can you remove them.
Reasons Why Horizontal Lines Appear On Laptop Screen
There might be several reasons why your laptop screen is displaying horizontal lines and understanding why it is happening is extremely important in order to fix the issue.
Hardware Issues
Overheating
Although not very common, overheating can cause horizontal lines on your laptop. In fact, if your laptop has not been shut down for days due to some important work and you have kept it in a high-temperature environment, then the chances of display problems as well as other problems are quite high.
The thing is, overheating affects various internal components of a laptop and seriously hinders their normal functioning thereby leading to various types of glitches including horizontal lines.
Damaged LCD Panel
You will obviously see glitches like horizontal lines or any other thing if your LCD panel is defective or damaged. You can check that yourself but you will have to make a replacement if the case is so.
Reach out to Laptop Repair Dubai if you have any problems or require any LCD Panel replacement. Also, you will find more information about LCD panels on our website.
Graphic Card
A graphic card is used for improving the visuals of your laptop. But, if it is in any way damaged or faulty, you might face visual glitches.
Here are some reasons –
- Any kind of internal damage or overheating of the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) can lead to visuals like horizontal lines on your laptop screen.
- If there is any physical damage to your graphic card, even then visual glitches can appear.
- Loose internal cables are also one factor that leads to horizontal lines on the screen.
You can check whether your graphic card is the main culprit behind horizontal lines by connecting your laptop to an external monitor. If horizontal lines appear on the external monitor display, that means there is a problem with your graphic card that needs to be checked.
Software Issues
Screen Resolution Setting
If you unnecessarily change your laptop’s screen resolution setting, then obviously the mismatch between the screen size and resolution can lead to glitches like horizontal lines.
In fact, any display setting that does not align with the actual screen size and resolution can lead to image stretching thereby leading to visual glitches. Therefore, one must always go with the settings that are compatible with the laptop screen.
Drivers Not Up-To-Date
If you have not updated your graphic drivers and are constantly using your laptop, then be assured to face any such display glitches soon. It happens that some software does not go well with an outdated graphic driver, and therefore software companies release these drivers according to the current market scenario.
If the case is so, you should consider going for an update before things get too much out of hand.
How To Fix Horizontal Lines On Laptop Screen?
You might have heard of the phrase “the solution lies in the problem itself”. Well, the case is quite similar with horizontal lines as well and there are some simple things that you need to take care of to remove the issue.
See If There Is Any Physical Damage
The first thing that you should do whenever you face a horizontal line on your laptop screen is check whether your screen is in mint condition or not. It might be that your laptop got a ‘pat’ somewhere while you were carrying it.
The display screen is a sensitive area and even a little force could maim it. Therefore, keeping it safe, in fact, keeping your laptop safe altogether is very important.
However, if you find any damage on your screen, consider replacing it with a new one so as to solve the horizontal line problem.
Use External Monitor To Test The Issue
If you are confused or unable to understand why your laptop screen is displaying horizontal lines, then using an external monitor is one of the best ways to find whether the problem is hardware-based or software-based.
Simply connect an external monitor with your laptop and turn on the operating system. Carefully examine whether the same display issue is happening on the external monitor or not. If the issue is not there, that means there is some physical damage (hardware problem) on your device. However, if you see the same horizontal lines on the external monitor screen, that means some internal glitch is causing the issue (software problem).
Update Your Graphic Driver
If you are a lazy fellow who skips an update whenever it pops on your screen, then you might have faced several issues on your laptop by now. Actually, updates are a good thing and they seriously mend any previous faults on the laptop. No wonder why companies bring them from time to time.
So, if you are facing horizontal lines on your laptop screen, simply go for an update and see whether the problem gets solved or not.
Change Your Laptop’s Display Settings
We have mentioned that choosing the wrong display settings can lead to image stretching or compression which can affect the visuals that come up on your laptop screen.
Simply do the following – Settings > System > Display
Make sure you choose the recommended display settings in order to get the best display output. Also, you can adjust your refresh rate and see if things become smoother or not. Sometimes, even that can help the magic happen.
Use Display Quality Troubleshooter
This is a Windows built-in tool mainly used to detect and rectify any display-related problems that you might face on your laptop.
The primary function of the display quality troubleshooter is to recognize any visual fault and also detect whether it is because of any hardware or software glitch.
You will find the display quality troubleshooter on your Windows by following the given steps –
Press Windows Key + I (Opens Windows Settings App) > System > Troubleshoot > Other Troubleshooters > Display Troubleshooter > Run
Now, you can simply run the troubleshooter and wait until it detects the issue and the reason and also gives you the necessary steps you can follow to resolve the problem.
However, if the issue is purely hardware-based, like any damage or so, then will have to reach out to a technician for that. Contact Laptop Repair Dubai for any such queries as we offer the best laptop repair services in Dubai.
You Can Perform A Clean Boot To Find The Core Of The Problem
Basically, a clean boot helps your system start using the minimum programs and drivers. So, if you perform a clean boot and see that there are no horizontal lines displaying on your laptop screen, then that means some third-party application is causing the issue.
To perform a clean boot, use the following method –
- Go To System Configuration > General Tab > Selective Startup > Uncheck Load Startup Items
- Next – Go To the Services tab > Check “Hide All Microsoft Services” > Click “Disable All”
- Now – Go To Startup Tab > Open Task Manager > Disable All Startup Items In The Task Manager Window > Click OK And Save Changes > Restart Your System
When your laptop restarts, see whether the horizontal lines are still there or not. If they are not, that means some application is causing the problem. If they are still there, then it could be a hardware issue like graphic card damage or any other as mentioned in the hardware section of this article.
Importantly, you should remember that a clean boot closes down almost all the startup items and services and therefore you will have to enable them once again by going to the same settings.
Check For Any Malware Fault
This is not a very common thing and therefore we have kept this point at the very end. It might be that any malware is messing with the display drivers of your laptop hence leading to various visual issues including horizontal lines.
For that, you can simply scan for any malware fault using any good antivirus and see whether the issue gets solved later on or not.
Some famous antiviruses include –
- Bitdefender Antivirus ‘Plus’
- Norton ‘360’
- Malwarebytes (Premium Security)
- McAfee ‘Antivirus Plus’
- Avast ‘One’
These antiviruses are some of the most famous ones used by people everywhere and you can go for any one of them to detect and resolve any malicious malware activity in your system.
Bottom Line
With all the information given here, we hope you are able to resolve the horizontal line problem on your laptop screen. However, consider choosing a professional technician if you are not able to understand things or if you are a ‘non-techy’ person.
And so with that, we end our blog and hope that our blog helped you. Thanks for reading!