I fixed my monitor’s pixels to make the screen look like new

I recently inherited an old monitor that a friend was going to recycle as e-waste after he upgraded. It was a decent brand with a 1080p resolution and a refresh rate that I figured was passable for casual gaming.

I was excited about the prospect of having a secondary display, so I was grateful for the generosity. The display’s image looked fine to me. But, being a tech guy, I thought I’d also run some diagnostics to check on its color, contrast, and resolution.

One of the tests I ran was to look for dead or stuck pixels, which I’ve heard can haunt some monitors. Low and behold, I uncovered a few stuck pixels lurking to the left of center.

They weren’t anything to cry home about, being just a few tiny dots — some monitors have it so bad that they’re almost unusable — but I set about fixing them anyway using a site called Piksel Test. I managed to get rid of them all too, so I’m going to use this test on all the screens I get from now on.

If you’re in a similar boat with any of the screens you own, be that a monitor, cellphone, TV, or tablet (LCD or OLED screen), you can do the same thing.

What to do

• Turn on your PC and wait for Windows to load.
• Connect to the internet and go to the Piksel Test website.
• Click on the Test Dead Pixel button.
• Take note of any dead or stuck pixels on your screen. The website has an explanation about how to identify each of those problem pixel types.
• Now scroll down the Piksel Test page and click on Dead Pixel Repair or Stuck Pixel Repair depending on what kind of pixels you discovered.
• Run the pixel fixer window over the pixels you want to repair for 10 minutes.

Dominic Bayley / Foundry

Tip: Your screen needs to be active for the duration of the fix, so turn off your sleep settings in Windows before you begin.

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