Problem with dell laptop screen

embraer170

My 1.5 year old Dell Vostro 1400 laptop suddenly developed a screen problem this morning. It only displays vertical coloured lines, although the laptop itself is clearly working (windows start up sound etc) with the colours changing as it goes through the start up process / password screen etc.

Pictures attached.

Never had any problem before and the laptop is no longer under warranty.... any ideas? Kinda desperate to get it fixed, I assume an external monitor will work (plan to try later when I get my hands on one) but looking for a proper fix.

Thanks.

EKRIUQ

Could be graphics card thats at fault.

Restart your machine then keep pressing F12 until you get the boot up screen then select the diagnotic option and wait for the results.

Voodu Child

More than likely the graphics card is on the way out. What GPU is it? The 8400M GS? Nvidia cards of this era are known to have a manufacturing fault that means they don't last as long as they should.

If this is the case, Dell have offered a 1-year extension of the warranty for this defect only
http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2008/08/18/nvidia-gpu-update-dell-to-offer-warranty-enhancement-to-all-affected-customers-worldwide.aspx

zilog_jones

Could be a connection issue - do the lines move around if you move the screen?

Abelloid

Ring Dell. I had the same problem (only a few lines, increasing by the week/month) and accidentally found a service bulletin stating it was a known issue
and all screens would be replaced FOC, my lappy was 2 years old at the time.

I rang, and they had an engineer out to me a couple of days later with a new screen.