How to Fix Your Dead Pixel

There's tip that might just breathe new life into an old LCD monitor that has seen better days. I recently ordered a new LCD to complement my new gaming desktop. When it arrived, a few minutes later, the stand assembled and the cables properly seated, I pressed the power switch and then I spotted it, slightly a stuck pixel. One tiny little blip of light, a stubborn wink in a sea of black—and for me, a total deal-breaker.

They're like gouges in a Monet, but worse. Paintings (generally speaking) don't move. Images on LCDs do, and that motion draws even more attention to these tiny, mocking points of unwavering brightness. Try playing games, on those levels where you're hunkered down in the dark behind steel pipes somewhere. You’ll notice it then— and once you've seen it, it's like a scab that you just can't seem to leave alone. In the past, I'd have just boxed up the LCD and returned it. That remains your best option if the LCD is still under warranty, or covered by a store's return policy.
Before returning a pixel-speckled LCD screen, consider what a soft cloth and your fingertip can do. Stuck Pixel on an LCD Monitor". I had heard about “massaging” a stuck pixel to coax it to start functioning, but the trick had always sounded like magic to me

The Pressure Method
Following along, I tried a free browser-based Java applet called JScreenFix (www.jscreenfix. com), which, according to its site, “repairs stuck pixels through rapid, repetitive operation and resonance.” After 10 minutes of running the applet, and another couple of seconds performing an on-off screen massage (the "Pressure Method"), I made my screen stuck- pixel-free.

Having placed a soft cloth on my finger, I pressed down moderately on the afflicted area while powering the screen off and on, and presto: Good-bye, little red dot of death. In the event that JScreenFix works for you before you have to "get physical," you might feel so thankful that you'd pay for the deluxe version, which claims to let you target problem areas while alleviating blotchy burn-in.
WikiHow's alternative “Tapping Method" involves displaying a black image on screen (making the stuck pixel easy to see) while gently tapping on the stuck pixel just enough to see a quick white glow after contact.

One caution: The fix I discovered has the potential to cause more stuck pixels, so consider it best attempted as a last resort. But it isn't magic after all. Just a bit of patience and a little hands-on fiddling, and you could make your LCD screen as good as it was the day you bought it.