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Seriously. No joke.

enter image description here

Clean 13.10 install. Not a single picture on my computer. I press F4 to switch over to my external monitor and...what is this?

ImaginaryRobots
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user205683
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    Have you ever played a game like this on this monitor? – Seth Oct 21 '13 at 18:08
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    may i know where you got the 13.10 source ? Did you do a system update or got the source from somewhere else like a torrent website ? – palerdot Oct 21 '13 at 18:15
  • I want to know if it is your desktop background or login background. – ansidev Oct 21 '13 at 15:18
  • No. Absolutely not. I should have taken a picture of both at once. I will try to replicate it to prove a point. My laptop is the the default background. – user205683 Oct 21 '13 at 15:19
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    Here is another example. It appears whatever is on the bottom of the page at the time I press F4 will occasionally transfer over and get slapped on the bottom of the monitor. Weird error. http://oi42.tinypic.com/2hhohzk.jpg That is what happens to this page, with my laptop beside it as a comparison. Everything from about help blog chat etc and down gets sent over. – user205683 Oct 21 '13 at 15:33
  • for the picture, I cannot see white region clearly. – ansidev Oct 21 '13 at 15:36
  • Here you go. I've zoomed it. I apologize, the quality is poor. But you get the point. I can replicate this in some form with literally any web page. http://oi44.tinypic.com/ir753r.jpg – user205683 Oct 21 '13 at 15:39
  • Can you explain for me this point: meaning of 'my external' in your question? I can see in zoomed picture. It is the footer of askubuntu.com, so maybe similar thing with space ship. I am waiting for your explaining – ansidev Oct 21 '13 at 15:42
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    My external monitor. Whenever I use my external monitor, which is hooked up to my laptop via HDMI, a bottom portion of whatever I am currently viewing occasionally gets sent over to my external monitor. This did not happen in 13.04 and is a new error to me in 13.10. – user205683 Oct 21 '13 at 15:44
  • maybe try to fix the resolution of the second display – Hakeem Wahab Oct 21 '13 at 15:45
  • That solves that issue, but creates further problems When I cycle through with F4, I get multiple errors. The first is everything locking up completely. I can cycle no further and have to force a restart. Other times, the whole screen will be jumbled up and ubuntu will send me an error message after reverting to the last known good configuration. – user205683 Oct 21 '13 at 15:51

1 Answers1

8

If the resolution of your monitor isn't quite set up correctly, your video card shows the correct pixels for your desktop, but then the extra monitor space gets filled with essentially random pixels from elsewhere in your video card's memory. From your comments it sounds like that is usually whatever is on the bottom of the previous display screen. If you've never looked at anything with that particular spaceship, it could be an image that is part of a video card self-test, or it could be a hidden background image from some other webpage.

Fixing the external monitor's resolution is the correct fix for this problem. If you've got other issues after doing that, please submit them as separate questions.

ImaginaryRobots
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