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Bright Green Line Down Center of Monitor on Boot-Up
Dell Dimension E521, OS-Vista, SP2
Today I booted up my computer and was met with a bright green line down the center of my 21.5 inch 2 week old Acer monitor. Fortunately when I turned off the computer and rebooted it again the boot repair screen appeared with the option to Repair Start up or Start up Normally(?). I chose Repair Startup and when it finished the computer booted up.
After about an hour, I turned off the computer and booted it up again. The same thing occurred; it booted to the green line down the monitor. I shut the computer off, turned it back on and again got the boot repair screen. However, this time I did not select Repair Start up but Start up Normally (?) and it booted up.
I know this is an indication that something is wrong with my computer and possibly soon it will not boot up at all. What could possible be causing this error?
Thank you.
RoHe
10 Elder
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44.3K Posts
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May 12th, 2011 14:00
It could be a lot of different things:
Did the monitor come with a drivers CD? And did you install them?
Failing video card
Corrupted video card driver
Defective monitor
Damaged/failing hard drive...
Reboot and press F12. Go to Utilties partition and run the diagnostic tests, including extended hard drive tests. Write down any error messages.
If no errors reported, run chkdsk on your hard drive to fix any file system errors.
Ron
movingtables
28 Posts
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May 12th, 2011 14:00
Sounds like your graphics card ram has failed.
make sure the graphics card is slotted in fully.
can you attached another pc / laptop to the monitor to rule out a monitor issue ?
RoHe
10 Elder
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44.3K Posts
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May 12th, 2011 14:00
And next time you see that green line, check the 4 diagnostic LEDs on front of the tower. If any are green, look up the error code here.
<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed / replaced from this post by Dell>
Ron
Jbx
16 Posts
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May 12th, 2011 16:00
Couple different things can cause this issue. Monitor, Graphics card, or the Onboard video controller. If you hook the monitor up to a different system and the line is not present, rule out the monitor...or if the line is present you have the culprit If the line is present at the bios level whenever the system is booting up and posting it is outside of the OS, rule out software. At that point it is running strictly without drivers etc. If you have a seperate desktop with the same PCI slot as in this computer, swap the card into a known good port. Hook up a monitor and If the line follows the card, you have the card as the issue. If the line is present before you see the windows logo and then disappears once the windows logo comes up, it could be an issue with the onboard video, before it hands off video to the card (Although you usually only see that in laptops).
Hope this helps.
Nissi1
322 Posts
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May 13th, 2011 20:00
Thank you everyone for your replies.
@Rohe, we were discussing the graphics card in my previous post as you remember. I never updated the video card because although Nvidia has a search box with a drop down list of video cards, Geforce 6150 LE is not listed at least not by those particular words. When I searched using what little knowledge I have I came up with two possibilities. That being said it was quite intimidating for me to select the proper updated card. I will however, run the diagnostics you suggested the next time I shut down the computer. Also, it would be very helpful if you can suggest which card I should use to update the Geforce 1650 LE. I know I should have made the request in our last post but was also hesitant to do so since you were so helpful.
@movingtables, the graphics card is an integrated card which came with my Dimension E521. In such a case can it become lose in the slot? Unfortunately, I do not have another pc but I do own my original 19 inch monitor. Perhaps that can be of assistance?
@JBX, whether the green line precedes the Dell logo, I do not know since I turned the computer off immediately after the line appeared. As mentioned above, the next attempt at booting up resulted in Startup Repair. I do not have another computer to hook the monitor onto but I can hook my old monitor to the computer to see if it has the green line.
I do not understand the workings of the Bios but the green line appears after the Dell logo and the scan that appears after bootup. After this, instead of the colorful Windows logo and opening music, the green line appears instead. (I hope I am clearly making myself understood to everyone.)
RoHe
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44.3K Posts
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May 14th, 2011 19:00
If you have nVidia integrated graphics, it can't come loose in the slot. Did you check the cable between the tower and the monitor? Power off and unplug both PC and monitor. Remove the cable and carefully reseat it at both ends. Try the old monitor too.
Since you see the prompts to Repair, this suggests the onboard video is able to produce a 'generic' video signal, which suggests it's not a motherboard failure. And since it's asking to repair, that suggests it's a software problem.
Refresh my memory. What happens if you boot in Safe Mode (reboot and press F8 before Windows starts to load).
Check the BIOS video settings. Reboot and press F2 before Windows starts to open BIOS setup. Look for the Primary Video setting and make sure it's set to Onboard. And check that the Video Memory Size option is set to 64 MB. Save the changes and exit setup. Does that help?
I don't see any drivers listed for onboard nvidia graphics in the E521 either at support.dell.com or at nvidia.com. Makes me suspect that the driver is built into Windows. I'll query the forum Liasions to confirm. If the driver is built into Windows, you may need to boot from your Windows CD and run a repair/reinstall which should fix the problem. Personal files and software you installed will be ok.
You may also want to run diagnostics on the hard drive in case it's failing.
Ron