Garbled display on Dell Inspiron 8200: Card or cable?

[SharkyTM]

I'm trying to fix a friend's inspiron 8200, and after installing a new drive (thanks newegg), i installed winxp. It installed with no flaws, but when it tried to do the welcome screen, the display turned to ~60% white/black static horizontal lines, ~40% image, but the image is only of the upper left hand section of the screen.

If I boot into VGA mode, i get everything looking OK, in 640x480, 8-color. If i change anything in display settings, like the resolution of color depth, it goes to static/garbled image, and will not come back, even if i switch it back to 8-bit, 640x480.

If i plug an external monitor in, it works great. Its just the internal LCD that acts up. The BIOS screen and the winXP load screen look fine, so i doubt its the LCD.

I asked my friend, and she used it a lot on a bed, so i'm guessing that the GFX chip or memory overheated. Its using a GeForce4Go 64MB card, and new ones are available on eBay, but i dont want to spend more of her money without knowing that the card is the problem.

Thanks in advance.

 

[PELarson]

Sounds like the video driver is bad or has been damaged.

Have you tried booting into Safe Mode and rolling back the video drivers to the previous generation? Or downloading the latest video driver for the GeForce4Go card and installling them when in Safe Mode?

 

[inspiron8200guy]

It very well could be a problem with the LCD panel itself. Try checking out the connections from the video card to the LCD. If your friend is a gamer, sell the GeForce and buy the Mobility Radeon 9000.

 

[SharkyTM]

its not the driver. Trust me. This is a 5 minute install of windows, and it will only work in VGA mode, safe mode doesnt work. The external output however is perfect in all resolutions.

Is there a way to test if its the LCD or the cable, aside from replacing the cable and seeing if that takes care of it?

 

[inspiron8200guy]

Try here: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins8200/en/sm_en/index.htm and click on replacing parts, then find the link to display. You will need to remove the keyboard and hingecover to see the LCD cable and inverter. The site will give you directions on how to remove each. Unfortunately, ther is no way to test the LCD cable by software that I know of. If you still have CompleteCare warranty, send it into Dell for a replacement.

 

[fuxxociety]

I've got a Dell Latitude C610 that has went out of warranty.

I've had the same problem as you in the recent past, however I was using my laptop when the problem happened, so I knew the underlying cause.

In my case, the display went completely nuts when I opened the LCD lid at a certain angle, and in my case (you guessed it) the LCD cable that goes from the video card up to the inverter board had gone bad. Simple problem, easy replacement, relatively cheap. ($25 USD direct from Dell).

If I were in your shoes, I'd replace the cable first, and work my way out towards the LCD panel itself from there.

as a sidenote, I don't belive your LCD panel itself is bad, usually when those go bad, _most_ of the panel will work short of a few pixels or a specific region of the screen won't display properly. My guesses are (1st) LCD cable and (2nd) inverter board failure. If the graphics chip or onboard memory had been overheated, then that will affect EVERYTHING your video card outputs, including the VGA signal to your external CRT monitor.