I cleaned the screen on my LCD monitor today, and shortly after I noticed a thin vertical line near the right side of the screen going from top to bottom (about a pixel wide). I cleaned it while the monitor was on and sprayed cleaner on a towel and wiped it. I thought perhaps it may have been a video card problem so I change resolutions and setting, but that didn't fix it. I just now touched the line on the screen and it went away.

I usually run my PC 24/7 but I have it set up to turn the monitor off after several minutes. I'm running dual PCI-E cards (ATI 1650's) in crossfire mode and the monitor is a Samsung 24" Syncmaster 244T. I'd hate to think about the cost of replacing the monitor, it's a little over a year old.

Any thoughts of what might have caused this?

It sounds less like a video card problem, and more like a glitch in the LCD itself. It might just be a one-off and the physical jolt when you touched the screen was sufficient to clear it, or it may be a permanent (and possibly progressive) problem. If so, you either have to live with it, or save up for a replacement (or check your warranty).

On the other hand, if it starts hissing and lashing its tail, cleaning the blackboard erasers or bombarding Confederate coastal installlations, you have got the wrong sort of monitor and should urgently consider a replacement.

Last winter I slipped on ice and fell on my little laptop. It took the knee. But somehow both are in working condition. My screen has cracks, black splotches and one pixel wide red line running right down the middle of it but my knee is much better now. Someday I'll replace the laptop but hopefully not my knee.

I think it's the nature of LCD monitors to have vivid color specs or a line, always 1 pixel in size, and very noticeable. I have one at work, and I hate it. It's always got specks on it that vanish when you peck them.