I just received a new Dell M4600 laptop at work along with a dual monitor docking station. I've already got 2 monitors at my desk. At first, I plugged one of the monitors into my docking station. It was working fine along with my laptop's built in screen.
I decided to try plugging in the 2nd monitor to the docking station. When I plugged it in, I had three screens total. My laptop monitor, and the 2 monitors on my desk. However, the problem I am having is that the 2nd monitor on my desk (monitor #3 if you count the laptop screen as #1) has pink and blue artifacts on the screen. They follow the transitions in light/dark of the desktop background or whatever is displaying on the screen. If I open a window and move it around, the artifacts will move too (if that makes any sense). All in all, the artifacts are more a distraction then anything. They don't prevent me from being able to use the monitor, but I know they aren't right.
My laptop is running windows 7, it has a quadro 2000M graphics card. It also has an i7 2640 processor with intel HD3000 graphics. The chipset lets the computer choose which graphics processor to used based on the application.
Here's the kicker. If I unplug the first monitor, the artifacts stay. If I unplug both monitors, and then replug in the artifacting monitor, it still has the artifacts. If I switch ports with the artifacting monitor on the docking station, it still artifacts. If I close my laptop screen, the primary monitor swtiches, and I still get artifacts on the monitor.
I plugged that monitor into another computer thinking that maybe the monitor was just going bad. When I did that, it had no artifacting. I've also thrown in several computer restarts to see if it would change at all, but it didn't. It's almost like my new computer is remembering that monitor and doing something to it because it doesn't matter where it get's plugged in, it still does that.
Does anyone have any ideas of things I could try to alleviate this problem? It seems like it isn't a hardware issue for either the computer, dock, or monitor. It does it no matter which port it is plugged into or how many monitors there are.
Thanks for the help