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Inspiron 530s displays only half screen through HDMI or DVI
I have a strange issue that I'm seeing with an Inspiron 530s that I'm trying to get up and running again. It appears to work fine if I use the default VGA port, but if I try to connect it to a television through HDMI or DVI, it only shows up on half the screen. The left side of the screen looks normal (whether it be the bootup Dell screens or actually in Windows). The right side of the screen is a series of vertical lines.
I have verified that the video card is not the issue. I have swapped another video card in and it does the same thing. Both video cards work properly in another machine. I have also verified that the television is working properly.
I have hooked the 530s to a normal 17" monitor through the VGA port and I see the whole screen.
The BIOS version is 1.0.0.18 which I understand to be the latest version.
I really would like to get this working, but I'm not sure what to look at at this point.
mrobsession
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August 14th, 2013 08:00
Further testing has established that the 530s as well as the 531s (which I was able to test on as well) must have problems with certain video cards. Once I established that the issue could be duplicated on both models, I decided that this must be an incompatibility issue rather than a problem with the motherboard.
I decided to try to get Windows installed despite the half screen. Once I had Windows installed, I changed the resolution to the native resolution of the television (1366x768) and the corrupted screen went away. Somehow it was fixed even if I rebooted the machine at that point and I was able to navigate the BIOS with a normal screen. In fact, I wasn't able to duplicate the issue again until completely shutting down the machine and removing the power completely. After doing that, the machine would again boot with the messed up display, which would remain until during the bootup of Windows it changed the screen resolution back to the native resolution and then again it would be "fixed".
The video card is not exactly new, but I think it may have been written to a newer spec of the PCI-E standard than what this motherboard may be expecting. If I were so inclined, I could probably find a video card that doesn't have this problem, but instead I think I'll just deal with this weird issue.
osprey4
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August 11th, 2013 06:00
Hi mrobsession,
You've got two variables, the display and the connection. You're connecting via DVI (or HDMI, same signal) to a TV, but VGA to a 17" monitor. Since you've tried another video card, I think we can safely conclude that's not the problem. What we don't know is whether the problem is with the display or the connection. What you need to do is try the same connection (DVI) to another display, or try two different connections (VGA, DVI) to the same display. Do you have any option to do that?
mrobsession
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August 11th, 2013 19:00
I have ruled out the video card since I've duplicated the issue with a different video card. I have ruled out the cable by duplicating it with both an HDMI cable and a DVI to HDMI cable (both video cards have DVI and HDMI ports). I have ruled out the TV by connecting other things to it and seeing the full screen.
Unfortunately this seems more and more like something is going on with the mainboard ... even though I've never seen anything quite like this before.
osprey4
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August 13th, 2013 17:00
Try running the diagnostics from the F12 partition into the TV through the DVI cable. This works outside the OS, so no driver issues.