I just bought a new LCD screen for my computer and I’ve noticed that there’s a spot on the screen that seems to be permanently green. What can I do about this?

I got this question from Carlo who had a problem pixel on his screen. Most screen manufacturers have tests they do on screens to make sure they don’t ship damaged ones, but usually 1 bad pixel per screen is fine for them and the screen gets shipped anyway. Now, there are 2 types of problem pixels on LCD: a dead pixel will always show up as black and a stuck pixel will be fixed in a particular colour.

If you have a problem pixel, most retailers will swap your screen for a new one without any problems, but it’s worth checking if you can fix the problem yourself. Sometimes these problems go away with time and there’s a utility called UDPixel which may help you to “undead” a dead pixel. It’s not guaranteed, but it won’t hurt to try. Here’s what you do:

1. Download the software
2. Run the program. You’ll be presented with a screen like this:
3. Use the left hand side of the screen to locate the damaged pixel. You can specify different colours to make sure you have all the stuck dead pixels
4. Once you’ve located a pixel use the right-hand side to create a flashing square that runs the pixel through it’s paces. Leave for a few hours.

As I said before, there’s no guarantee this will work, but there’s more chance you can fix it than winning meeting a stranger on the street and being given tickets to Caribbean cruises just because he likes the way you look; so it doesn’t hurt to try. If this fails, contact the retailer you bought the display from, because it’s not an uncommon problem and they usually have procedures to deal with this.