LCD image retention

well, i believe i jus experienced LCD image retention. i noticed it about 20 mins ago when my comp decided to randomly reboot, and i could see a nice outline of where the volume control window was. ive had winamp visualizations going full screen since then, in hopes of getting it to reset. i started by trying to find any info on acer's pile of trash they call a site, and found nothing, so i searched here and didnt find much, other than a little saying that image retention on LCDs isnt permanent. so i google, and found a little in google groups.

http://groups.google.com/group/sci....=st&q=image+retention&rnum=1#b36137aacb12910d

im hoping that the visualizations work to clear it, i just spent $230 on this monitor and its the best one ive owned, and i will be terribly sad if it is permanent damage. no i will probably send it back to acer and never buy a product from them again, if it doesnt start fading within a week. im kinda scared, and kinda angered by the situation, and ive set the comp to turn off the display after 3 mins now. its bad enough that it can be seen by my phones digicam.

anyone else have any ideas? other than crying. i had to notice this at the worst possible time it seems. my weekend (Saturday through today) has been one huge pile of ****, with bein really sick and stuff, now this decides to **** on me, if the acer corporation was a person in my presence right now i would probably punch it, repeatedly, just to let out my frustration. i really dont know where im going with this any more, so heres a link to the pic.
http://www.copperfast.com/jim/albums/random/03_06_06_2045.jpg
look straight above the stuff in the taskbar, its not as easy to make out in the crappy pic as in real life, but im still pretty upset over it. this is the first time ive seen such a thing, and i have said in other posts that i didnt think LCDs would do this. i was wrong,andi had to learn that the hard way.

edit: i also tried the monitor on another source to be sure it wasnt some crazy issue with my vid card. ive power cycledthe monitor many times, hoping it would do something. nothing. im sorry if this is one big incomprehendable mess, its a whole lot of **** at once and im probably not all that with it.

good news folks, it is indeed fading. i woke up around 3 or so i believe and turned off the visualizations and let it just turn the monitor off, and that seems to be what took care of it. so if you ever run into this... try just leaving it sit, power on but in standby, so it can let it all get back to normal. i'd still like to know why it did that, when the lappy has been fine for almost a year now for me... oh well, long as it isnt broken for good im happy, although i'll probably have to be careful not to do it again.

I had this problem after I ran memtest for a night with my monitor on. A white screensaver makes quick work of the problem (just create a blank bitmap for the picture viewer ss). It isn't permanent and will fade over a long period of time by itself (provided the conditions which gave rise to it are alleviated). I am unsure as to the technical cause of it.

The issue they are speaking of in your link is the gradual degradation of the materials which compose the colour filters in the LCD. Have you ever seen a dashboard in a car which has been left out in the sun for a very long time? Same idea, except the UV radiation emitted by the backlight is rather insignificant compared to the sun so this indeed would take a *very* long time.

I had this problem with my monitor because for some reason my screen saver failed to come on and power saving also didn't(Most likely my fault) I turned it off and unplugged it for two days came back and it was gone and it's be fine ever since.

Two days without a computer was terrible though cause back then I didn't have my laptop....

I had to go outside.