Inspiron 8200 display not working correctly...

[mattd860]

My Inspiron 8200 started displaying nothing but odd characters and other crazy stuff last night. Please view the pics for a better description of what is going on. I am running the stock Geforce4 440 go 32mb video card with lastest driver from Microsoft Updates. The Computer is running Win Xp Pro SP2 with1gb of ram. I reformatted the hardrive this morning thinking it was a bug/virus or something but the fuzzyness (word?) never went away even with a new copy of winxp pro installed. Do you think the video card is shot or the connection to the monitor? Or worse, the motherboard? I was also thinking it could be that the bios needs reflashing so should I just install the latest bios drivers from dell.com (I would have to buy a floppy drive as I currently don't have one)? Any advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

[Jack Bauer]

It looks like either you graphics card is shot or there is a loose connection or your screen has gone bad. You can look on ebay for new laptop screens but it probably wont be worth it and it might not be the problem. I would just buy a new laptop cause I think that one has gone bad.

 

[mattd860]

It looks like either you graphics card is shot or there is a loose connection or your screen has gone bad. You can look on ebay for new laptop screens but it probably wont be worth it and it might not be the problem. I would just buy a new laptop cause I think that one has gone bad.

I doubt the screen is shot because sometimes it comes in clear. I am betting on the connection because when the screen is moved, it flickers and jumbles even worse. Can I just open the bottom of the laptop up to view the connection cable (is there such thing)??

 

[Jack Bauer]

I doubt the screen is shot because sometimes it comes in clear. I am betting on the connection because when the screen is moved, it flickers and jumbles even worse. Can I just open the bottom of the laptop up to view the connection cable (is there such thing)??

Ok then it probably is a loose connection or dying videocard. You can open up laptops dells are fairly easy to open and find the graphics card and see if anything is loose in there.