A simple fix for the Dell 2407 Ghosting Problem

Dell 2407FPW flatscreen monitors, with default settings, appear to have very nasty ghosting issues when you scroll dark items on light backgrounds. This has been reported by many people in many places, but there is a very simple way to fix it.

If you have a 2407, scroll this page up and down and pay attention to the image below. You will probably notice some really odd ghosting and/or flickering around the text inside of the white quote box, as well as the border of the quote box itself:

Image which, when scrolled, triggers the ghosting issue on the Dell 2407

As far as I can tell this seems to be a bug in the display's firmware. (My screen has the A03 firmware, which is quite recent.) My theory is that some color registers are overflowing or something like that. I say this because I realised that you can fix the issue by simply adjusting the color settings. If the red, green or blue values are set too high (which they are with all of the presets) then the problem occurs; reduce the colors a little and the issue goes away. I was ready to return my monitor but now I'm perfectly happy and it works brilliantly.

Below you will find the color settings that I use. Feel free to experiment to find settings which both look good to you and don't cause the problem. Don't forget that you can tweak the brightness elsewhere in the menu if adjusting the colors makes the screen darker than you want it to be. The brightness setting does not seem to trigger the issue; it's to do with the color settings.

Color Format:PC RGB
Color Settings Mode:PC Mode
Color Adjustment:PC Custom Color
Red:86
Green:85
Blue:84

Here's a screenshot of what your Color Settings menu should look like. Remember that selected items are blue and other items are white. (PC RGB is selected below, not HD YPbPr, even though the latter one is brighter and appears to be selected.)

Color settings which fix the ghosting problem on the Dell 2407

Other people have confirmed that these settings solve the problem for them and I hope they help you, too. Tell your 2407 owning friends!

Plug: If the info here helped fix your monitor then you can repay me by reading my introduction to Directory Opus, a super-cool file manager for Windows. I don't make Opus, or make any money from it, but I absolutely love the program and I want to share it with you. Check it out if you have a moment. :-)