Dell AIW 9800 - blank screen after weeks of usage

[mikegi]

I have a friend with a relatively new Dell machine running XP. It has an AIW
9800. Machine worked fine for months then suddenly his monitor went blank.
He called Dell support and they sent him a new machine. It worked fine, too,
for a couple of weeks then the monitor went blank. There is no video even
when cold booting the computer (eg. the BIOS stuff never appears).

It's not the monitor. It works fine when connected to his laptop.

His Dell machine appears to work, it's just that the monitor output from the
AIW is not working.

I'm thinking that he or his wife did something to shut off the VGA output
from the AIW (or switch it to TV output only). Is there a way to reset the
AIW back to it's default state?

Any other ideas? It seems very strange that two different machines behaved
similarly.

Thanks

 

[V Green]

Using a LCD monitor on the DVI cable, by any chance?

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportfo...essage.id=27226&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

watch for URL wrap...

 

[Temor]

You will probably get a better answer than this but...........

does the AIW have a switch function, a bit like "Fn F4" or similar on
laptops, where you can blank the lappy display to switch to an external
monitor? i.e. has you wife hit a key sequence?

temor

 

[mikegi]

Thanks for the replies.

I talked to my friend and got more details. Looks like its a problem with
the cable. I must have had too much beer at the 4th of July party and got
confused. Here's what happened:

1) His machine (a dell 8300) started smelling "electrical". He called Dell
and they sent out a new machine. The AIW and the monitor were working fine
on both the old smelly machine and the new one.

2) Two weeks after getting the new machine, the monitor went blank. He calls
Dell and they send out a new AIW 9800. He installs it and the monitor is
still blank. He tried to explain to the Dell service that he needed a new
cable (the one that breaks out into VGA, etc) but they can't figure out how
to send him one.

Basically, the prime suspect is that cable.

Mike