Display Problem--Lines around icons and mouse

My Dell monitor attached to the Mac Mini recently shows faint lines and hatchings around the mouse curser, moving along with the cursor, and also appears around the header of the desktop, dock and the icons for folders,etc. When the screen goes in sleep mode and the screen saver comes on the resolution is really bad with these same lines cutting through the images. Furthermore, the drop down menu displays the same hatchings and lines but appears all over the menu.
I've tried resetting the resolution and that did not change it. I thought the computer got too hot and put it on top of an external fan pad, but the lines and hatchings are still there. I connected the monitor to my lab top and the lines and hatchings are not there.
Could this be a problem with the video card or ram?
Thanks for any suggestions and help.

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
While this could be a hardware fault, specifically the ATI video subsystem and it's 32Mb VRAM, it could also be something simple such as a connection in the video cable.
First thing to try is to unplug the video cable (and adapter if used), and the cable at the display end, and then reconnect everything,making sure it is very tightly reconnected. Once the system is rebooted, if the problem still exists, as a double check that it isn't the cabling, gently press down and sideways on the connectors to see if there is any change or flickering in the image. If there is, then the connectors may not be making a solid connection.
If the cabling isn't the problem, there are two things to try next:
Firstly, perform a PMU reset to ensure the video subsystem is being correctly powered.
To reset the PMU
- Unplug all cables from the computer, including the power cord.
- Wait 10 seconds.
- Plug in the power cord while simultaneously pressing and holding the power button on the back of the computer.
- Let go of the power button.
- Press the power button once more to start up your Mac mini.
If that doesn't resolve it, download and run YASU (it's available at www.versiontracker.com), setting it to perform all tasks except deleting cookies. Leave it to run, without using the system for anything else while it does it. This will clear out system caches and perform a range of other spring cleaning type activities and then force the system to reboot when done. The reboot will be slower than usual and the first few minutes afterwards the system will also be a little slow as it rebuilds the cache files, but this can often resolve odd behavioral problems of this sort.
If the problem persists after that, please post back.

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