Laptop Video Problem

C

Clark

I have a Dell Inspiron 600m. In the past, the video problem has been
intermittent, but now seems to be permanent. The problem shows up as what
appears to be green artificts in the display. Perhaps some color is being
displayed incorrectly, but it isn't some pixels, it is the entire LCD
wherever the color combination exists. It seems lines, both vertical and
horizontal are being drawn and show in the edges of normal windows as well
as any color areas.

I put the laptop on a CRT display and everything looks normal. So, I
suppose the question is, has the LCD panel gone bad, or could it still be
the part of the motherboard video that is incorrectly displaying on just the
LCD panel. The laptop uses a Mobility Radeon 9000, and replacing the hard
drive with a fresh install made no difference.

I have reseated the connection to the LCD panel, so it doesn't appear the be
that. Any test or procedure I could use to be more specific about the
problem?

Thanks,
Clark
 
D

Don

Clark said:
I have a Dell Inspiron 600m. In the past, the video problem has been
intermittent, but now seems to be permanent. The problem shows up as what
appears to be green artificts in the display. Perhaps some color is being
displayed incorrectly, but it isn't some pixels, it is the entire LCD
wherever the color combination exists. It seems lines, both vertical and
horizontal are being drawn and show in the edges of normal windows as well
as any color areas.

I put the laptop on a CRT display and everything looks normal. So, I
suppose the question is, has the LCD panel gone bad, or could it still be
the part of the motherboard video that is incorrectly displaying on just the
LCD panel. The laptop uses a Mobility Radeon 9000, and replacing the hard
drive with a fresh install made no difference.

I have reseated the connection to the LCD panel, so it doesn't appear the be
that. Any test or procedure I could use to be more specific about the
problem?

Thanks,
Clark
Click to expand...
I'm no expert, but it wouldn't surprise me if the LCD display is going.
How old is the machine? I had a dell notebook from work and the
video died after a month. So many people have problems with Dell
laptops. Just google "Dell Hell".
 
K

kony

I have a Dell Inspiron 600m. In the past, the video problem has been
intermittent, but now seems to be permanent. The problem shows up as what
appears to be green artificts in the display. Perhaps some color is being
displayed incorrectly, but it isn't some pixels, it is the entire LCD
wherever the color combination exists. It seems lines, both vertical and
horizontal are being drawn and show in the edges of normal windows as well
as any color areas.

I put the laptop on a CRT display and everything looks normal. So, I
suppose the question is, has the LCD panel gone bad, or could it still be
the part of the motherboard video that is incorrectly displaying on just the
LCD panel. The laptop uses a Mobility Radeon 9000, and replacing the hard
drive with a fresh install made no difference.

I have reseated the connection to the LCD panel, so it doesn't appear the be
that. Any test or procedure I could use to be more specific about the
problem?

Thanks,
Clark
Click to expand...


Probably the panel but it might not hurt if you took a
picture of it and posted a link to that picture here.
 
C

Clark

Don said:
I'm no expert, but it wouldn't surprise me if the LCD display is going.
How old is the machine? I had a dell notebook from work and the
video died after a month. So many people have problems with Dell
laptops. Just google "Dell Hell".
Click to expand...

I suppose my problem is I have not seen an LCD with a problem, so I
don't know if this is a normal malfunction. I will look for a book to
today that might have examples of bad displays.

Thank,
Clark
 
C

Clark

The original picture shows green throughout the photo as though it had
replaced another color, or other colors had been removed and only the
green remained. I suppose I can't post one that will be accurate.

I checked Dell and a new LCD costs around $400. I will have to decide
whether to live with this or attempt to replace the current LCD panel.

If I knew for sure the video output was the same for both the LCD and
the external monitor, I would know the LCD was bad. Maybe the fact the
picture is normal indicates the LCD has to be bad, since the captured
desktop looks normal on another monitor. A printout of the capture also
did not show any abnormalities, so I will have to assume the video
signal is good, but the LCD is bad.

Thanks for your help, it is now decision time! ;-o

Clark
 
K

kony

The original picture shows green throughout the photo as though it had
replaced another color, or other colors had been removed and only the
green remained. I suppose I can't post one that will be accurate.

I checked Dell and a new LCD costs around $400. I will have to decide
whether to live with this or attempt to replace the current LCD panel.

If I knew for sure the video output was the same for both the LCD and
the external monitor, I would know the LCD was bad. Maybe the fact the
picture is normal indicates the LCD has to be bad, since the captured
desktop looks normal on another monitor. A printout of the capture also
did not show any abnormalities, so I will have to assume the video
signal is good, but the LCD is bad.

Thanks for your help, it is now decision time! ;-o

Clark
Click to expand...


You might look around for aftermarket panels, dont' know
where you might find one but would expect it lower than
$400. "IF" there was some assurance the Dell panel were
higher quality it might be a consideration but since it may
be failing I don't know that I could consider that higher
quality.

You might also see what a repair shop would charge to
diagnose the problem as $400 is a large chunk of change to
spend on most laptops... but then their bench fee drives
cost up even more.
 
K

kony

Last try at a picture. I took this with a camera and posted it. I did
find some on e-bay for $79 to $278. If I could get one cheap, I might
try it just to see if it would work. I will probably start looking for
a new laptop, just in case. This one has been a problem since I got it
and has a small screen, which I not longer need.

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa131/bradley_bucket_album/DesktopDisplay.jpg

Thanks,
Clark
Click to expand...


I can definitely see what you're talking about now and do
still think it's the panel, but no guarantees, I'm not 100%
positive of it. You might also see if there is any demand
for the parts on ebay, parting out the laptop might recover
some of the loss if you chose to buy new instead, or you
never know, you might find some car MP3 player/etc nut that
wants a working semi-modern laptop and didn't need the
original panel to work.
 
P

Paul

Clark said:
Last try at a picture. I took this with a camera and posted it. I did
find some on e-bay for $79 to $278. If I could get one cheap, I might
try it just to see if it would work. I will probably start looking for
a new laptop, just in case. This one has been a problem since I got it
and has a small screen, which I not longer need.

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa131/bradley_bucket_album/DesktopDisplay.jpg


Thanks,
Clark
Click to expand...

Is there any chance this is caused by a gamma setting ? Does gamma apply
to different output paths independently ?

It almost looks like a color lookup problem of some sort.

A better way to test this, might be with geometric primitives
and solid colors. Say a picture of a square of value 0,0,0, one
of 255,0,0, one with 0,255,0, and so on. (You can check the numeric
value of pixel in the source picture in Photoshop or similar.)
You might see a pattern to what is happening that way. Using
simpler primitives might make it easier to see from an arithmetic
point of view, what is happening.

Another question. Is it possible to change the resolution setting,
such that the LCD panel has to resample the data to display it
(i.e. non-native resolution) ? What happens then ?

Paul
 
C

Clark

I have tried changing resolution with no effect.

I have tried changing some settings such as you suggest, but nothing
definite and would not be fixable anyway.

It has been doing this almost since I got the computer, but before it
only happened after I had played a video for about 45 minutes, and only
rebooting would fix it then.

I think I will live with it until I decide to get a new computer. It is
not good for watching videos anyway, so it will still work for the basic
stuff just fine. I may try to get a panel from E-Bay, but of course
there would be no guarantee the new panel might not have the same problem.

Thanks folks,
Clark
 
P

Paul

Clark said:
I have tried changing resolution with no effect.

I have tried changing some settings such as you suggest, but nothing
definite and would not be fixable anyway.

It has been doing this almost since I got the computer, but before it
only happened after I had played a video for about 45 minutes, and only
rebooting would fix it then.

I think I will live with it until I decide to get a new computer. It is
not good for watching videos anyway, so it will still work for the basic
stuff just fine. I may try to get a panel from E-Bay, but of course
there would be no guarantee the new panel might not have the same problem.

Thanks folks,
Clark
Click to expand...

AFAIK, the Mobility 9000 consists of a chip, with four RAM chips
soldered to the top of it. One picture showed a cross shaped piece
of material, stuffed between the four RAM chips. Almost as if
that was their idea of a thermal path for the heat. If playing
video for 45 minutes was doing it, perhaps that was a heat problem.

Maybe some day, if you decide to replace it, you can take apart the
base and look at how the GPU is cooled. There should be a heat pipe,
a metal plate, or something, to pull the heat from the GPU. So that
GPU might be under a cover of some sort. If the thermal interface
material was dry or had broken away, maybe that would cause problems.
But the thing is, the "results" on your screen look pretty orderly,
whereas bad memory or a bad GPU can result in all kinds of bizarre
graphical faults (triangle, lines, you name it). Remapping a
few colors seems quite "tame" as a fault.

Paul
 
C

Clark

Paul said:
AFAIK, the Mobility 9000 consists of a chip, with four RAM chips
soldered to the top of it. One picture showed a cross shaped piece
of material, stuffed between the four RAM chips. Almost as if
that was their idea of a thermal path for the heat. If playing
video for 45 minutes was doing it, perhaps that was a heat problem.

Maybe some day, if you decide to replace it, you can take apart the
base and look at how the GPU is cooled. There should be a heat pipe,
a metal plate, or something, to pull the heat from the GPU. So that
GPU might be under a cover of some sort. If the thermal interface
material was dry or had broken away, maybe that would cause problems.
But the thing is, the "results" on your screen look pretty orderly,
whereas bad memory or a bad GPU can result in all kinds of bizarre
graphical faults (triangle, lines, you name it). Remapping a
few colors seems quite "tame" as a fault.

Paul
Click to expand...
Just an update, replacing the LCD panel was no help. The next thing I
might check is Paul's suggestion, although I don't know why the problem
would be there if the VGA output had a good signal.

It could still possibly be the cable, or perhaps something related to
just LCD video output.

Clark
 

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