How dead is my Dell?
- From: "Albédo" <ac.albedo@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 12:24:07 +0200
Hello from France (again).
I have this Dell Inspiron 9400, 17". It is 16 months old (but has always been
acting much older).
Yesterday, as I was watching a DVD, I noticed that something strange was
happening: the image was shaky, the lips no longer synchronized with the dialog.
I took the DVD out.
Later, when I wanted to use the machine out of its extended sleep mode, the
screen showed only thin, vertical stripes, and the whole thing was frozen. Going
icon Start + right arrow 3 times + up arrow 3 times, I managed to reboot.
But it got even worse as the day was passing: the screen now showed only
something whitish; at first it looked as if it was lacking light, but then
something started to appear slowly, which in the end looked like a little
manuscript page, very much blurred, spreading several times over the screen.
I don't even know if Vista is loaded; it looks so, as the Dell Fn key + up or
down arrow changes the intensity of the lighting, but no other combination of
keys is effective. Sometimes CTRL ALT DEL makes the screen go deep black for
some time, but that doesn't last and it soon resumes its gloomy, whitish look.
Also, CTRL ALT DEL sometimes seems to address the CD/DVD tray, which comes to
life for some time (just mecanical sounds, nothing on the screen) before
stopping. The lighted indicators such as CAP, wi-fi and Bluetooth also all seem
to act strange: sometimes some are lit, sometimes some are not.
I connected a regular monitor to the machine, at no avail.
Thanks to a connection kit, I can retrieve the data on my hard disk (I had to
change the first one after 13 months), so I am ready to junk the whole machine,
as it has always been more or less malfunctioning ever since I bought it from
Dell (1.700 euros in April 07, which is quite an amount of money) and buy some
cheap stuff I'll junk after one year if I have to. In other words, I no longer
trust those major makers...
Now, still, I'd like to know :
- do you feel the video card is the problem (it's an nVidia Corporation GeForce
Go 7900 GS 256 Mo, and I've also always had problems with nVidia, whatever the
machines)?
- or could it be the mother-board?
- if the video card it is, could I change it? I mean, it is not "tattooed" by
Dell as are the mother-boards?
- if it can be changed, do you think I could do this myself, or is it a tricky
thing to do, requiring special tools and things?
- before thinking of forking out whatever money a new video card would cost, is
there *any* way I could make *sure* the video card, and only it, is the problem?
Sincere thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts.
--
a.
.
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