Screen issues with windows 7

Hi,

Let me start by saying that I have a Dell XPS M1530 its 2 years old and has been working well enough lately. Today when I got home after school I booted it up out of sleep mode and the screen had a black stripe on the right side and the very bottom of the part of the screen that visible is distorted, almost as if it is magnified. A third issue is that the brightness level seems to be stuck on the lowest setting and I can't get it to change at all, not using the control panel, the battery settings or the keyboard short cuts. I looked in the control panel at the resolution, screen settings, display settings and nothing seems to work. So, i rebooted it, nothing happened, I rebooted it again, and it was fine. Then, again this afternoon it had gone into sleep mode, and when I tried to boot it up, the screen wouldn't show up at all, even though the computer was on. I rebooted it a couple of times and now the black band, distortion at the bottom and the low brightness are all back! The other thing that may help is that the black band isn't covering part of the screen, its as though its taken out of a 16:9 screen size and put into 4:3. I'm frankly out of ideas and would love any help you guys could give me. Thanks a lot in advance!

 

Many of that model Dell did experience motherboard failure (graphics portion).

You can try and run the Dell diagnostics extended tests, see what turns up.
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xpsM1530/en/OM/HTML/trouble.htm#wp1068124


Also you can connect an external monitor to it, see if you get the same distortions, if you do it is the graphics chip failing, time for a motherboard or a new laptop.

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I rebooted my computer to run the diagnostics from the Dell screen, and the screen was normal, with normal brightness and no distortion. I ran the diagnostics anyway, and everything checked out. I don't really know what to say other than that this computer seems a bit finicky. Would you recommend taking it to the IT at my university? Or will they do the same things that I'm doing? Thanks for your help btw, i really appreciate it.

 

Sounds like it is intermittent, try the diagnostics when it is having fits on a regular basis.

Not sure what the capabilities of your University IT dept are. Might be wort a try if you trust them with your Laptop and the data on it.

 

Hi,

Thanks for you help so far. New development. When I use it with an external display (my tv), it works fine, but it doesn't even attempt to turn on the laptop display. When I've used it with the television before, it gives me two displays, one on the laptop screen and one on the external monitor. Also, now when I attempt to turn it on without an external display, the screen doesn't turn on at all. Does this still make sense as a graphics card issue?

 

Don't count on it : -)

Since that graphics chip can support 2 monitors at the same time, it could still be a problem with it, only affecting the primary monitor, either that or the inverter for the LCD panel is going out. but the diagnostics is supposed to check it, run the diags again (without the TV connected) , if the menu shows a custom test, choose that, this way you can just test the Video, saves time.

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I ran diagnostics after it started working with the second monitor (and then with the laptop screen as well, and I don't know why). The diagnostics came up with the following error: PSA 2000-0321 Unable to detect LCD. Mind you, this is while the primary monitor was working. I'm really confused how sometimes (like right now) it doesn't work as its supposed to, and sometimes its fine.

Thanks for both of your help, once again.

 

Also, its detecting the primary display, but when I say to duplicate screens or extend the screen, the primary one doesn't work at all. When I unplug the second display it does what I was describing before, the black band on the side and the distortion at the bottom.