Monitor/ hardware/ display problem

[David Fox]

I'm now on the laptop because for some reason, my desktop system has
become unusable due to a possible dying monitor.

Brierly, my desktop system has for a monitor a Viewsonic E90 that up
until today has been running perfectly. My desktop is a intel quad
core using an Asus P5QL-EM motherboard, G43 Intel video chipset;
Everything on the desktop is up to date.

What I noticed soon after playing a video with vlc - and I'm not sure
vlc can be blamed here - is that my monitor screen suddenlty shows
only half the screen with a vertical bar on the top of the bottom half
of the screen. The top half of the screen is no longer visible.

I tried ctrl-alt-F1, got a reasonable looking screen, rebooted, and
for a while it worked, then it suddenly stopped working - going to 1/2
screen. I'm leaving it off for now, but does it look like I might need
a new monitor? The E90 is several years old (I got it secondhand in
2005 or 20006, I think.

-- 
thanks for letting me change the magnetic patterns on your hard disk.