External monitor flicker, laptop ground loop problem solved
Are you having problems with a flickering external monitor on your laptop?
Does the flicker go away if you remove the laptop charger?
If you answered yes to the above questions, you probably have a ground loop. Slimplified this is because the monitor is grounded (using a 3 prong coord) and the laptop is not grounded.
What you need to do is disable the ground for the monitor. If you are using a european 240V connector just put some scotch tape over the sides of the connector, that is the ground. Check that the tape does not break when the connector is inserted. You might have to put several layers of tape on the connector.
If you have other connector types you can take a spare power cable and remove the ground prong for the monitor, or you could just use an adapter that only has 2 prongs but accepts three, like this one:
After this the flickering should go away.
BEWARE your monitor is now ungrounded, so don’t use it in the bath-tub.
Good luck!
thanks for your bewareness..
You’re welcome
I had the same problem with this laptop ext. monitor grounding and i think i have better way to solve this…i used continuous cable or u can use socket that doesn’t have grounding (those two pins) cos i think that putting that scotch tape is a lil bit risky cos it can caught fire. . .
Okay, so you connected to an ungrounded socket using an extension cable. Ok yes that will work too. However, there is no way the tape can catch fire. It just isolates a grounding point, and its not in contact with any live wires.
But thank you for your comment!
Thank you so much. I was able to fix a truly long-standing problem of mine. I bought alll kinds of different supposedly helpful gadgets to plug in between my monitor and the power source, my laptop and the power source, the adapter and whatever else and I had almost given up on this issue which was really really annoying. Your entry just sorted the whole issue in 2 minutes. Thank you so much.
Ingo, glad to help
thanx for commenting!
I broke the ground pin of my laptop powerbar and now it works perfectly! thank you!