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Alienware M17x R2 display problem
Hi all,
Last week I was watching a movie on the laptop and all of a sudden the screen went all pixellated and jagged. Immediately did a reset and loaded up, however the display showed four streaks of the same pixellated feature shown before. I even resorted to re-installing the windows but did not fix the issue.
Loading OK on safe-mode (therefore assuming it is either a driver problem or hardware issue), uninstalled the driver and installed the most recent one. Still same issue on restart. Loaded again on safe-mode and disabled the driver then no issue.
Can you please assist?
My graphics card is "ATI Mobility Radeon HD4870" running on Alienware M17x R2. I take care of it religiously i.e. I rarely move it from my desk and even close the lid carefully.
Could it be that perhaps dust is causing the graphics card to loose it's contact with the main board? I was going to try and do a thorough cleaning tomorrow.
Many thanks in advance.
Alienware-Naomi
1.8K Posts
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March 3rd, 2014 14:00
Hi!
To confirm that the problem is not on the LCD I recommend you connect to an external monitor if possible, to check for any signs of the same pixels. Once you confirm that, make sure you do a clean driver installation as explained here. If issue persists, email us to AWSocialMedia@dell.com with your Service Tag and a short description on the problem.
markpace123
2 Posts
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March 4th, 2014 00:00
Thank you for your quick reply. I have checked that it's not an LCD issue, connected an external monitor and it was only mirroring what I was seeing on the LCD.
I tried the clean driver installation as explained but again the same issue came up showing this on start up:
(had to edit the picture so that i could upload it) those lines streak across the whole screen.
I have been noticing that the GPU area was becoming quite warm quick (and it's quite cold here). I will try cleaning it soon. However do you think it might be some other issue? When this happened I was only watching a movie, haven't played a game on it for a while.
Alienware-Naomi
1.8K Posts
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March 4th, 2014 12:00
The problem seems to be the video card. Please sends us an email to the address above and we’ll review your case further!
keys22s
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March 20th, 2014 09:00
Hi, I had the same problem on my desktop except that I had vertical strips all over the screen. I looked back to see that it had done some kind of windows(?) upgrade at the time (I was watching a YouTube video when it happened). I tried using a different monitor, did all the diagnostics tests, and also did a system restore but nothing changed. It drove me crazy for almost a week. Then I did another system restore further back... and after my computer re-did its newest upgrade stuff, everything was back to normal, clear screen and all. I'm not holding my breath but so far so good. I don't know, maybe try that. Good luck to you.
San
Kristak1
2 Posts
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September 20th, 2014 21:00
This seems to be the most helpful post I've seen after also going crazy for a week, I have (M17x R2) the same problem and sort the same solutions as Keys22s but I may try going back to a further restore point but the very first screen iso effected on start up so who knows, I've also just upgraded to a SSD and replaced one of my 4gb of ram with 8GB and swapped it back but made no difference. But clean install is the problem so its more or less one of my updates on Windows 7 or a program install at fault, as I was initially scared it was a Hardware issue but that seems less and less likely. THX again guys you gave me hope to fix it myself.