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Laptop screen turns gray
I have an Inspiron 17. My warranty runs out in two weeks. Over the last few weeks I've noticed an intermittent, occasional situation with my video.
The machine will boot up fine, I'll be using it for hours or days, then it just turns GRAY. It turns gray, and I won't say the screen is flickering, not the whole screen, but there seems to be some flickering of the grayness on a portion of the screen.
If I click on CTRL ALT DEL it will take me back to the windows screen where you can lock the PC, switch the user, cancel, etc. It takes me to that screen OK. I cant remember but I believe at that moment the resolution changes to a bigger sized font resolution, but when I click CANCEL it returns me back to my desktop and everything is fine again. It will stay fine for sometime. Theres no real pattern to this. Completely random, and not every day but as of late I've noticed it happening a little bit more.
Obviously with only two weeks left in my warranty I'm concerned in getting this done ASAP.
I called support, their recommendation was to wipe out the PC, doing the restore that brings the machine right back to factory default. Obviously this is not something I can do in one sitting as I have to make sure everything I need is backed up.
Has anyone experienced this sort of issue before? Is wiping out the laptop and starting over really the best path to take?
Suggestions?
Thanks.
kirkd
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April 14th, 2011 14:00
The Dell "Help" squad always seems to want to blame eveyrthing on software. There are three things you can do to look for a software problem.
1 - In a "BOS" box run as an administrator sfc /scannow. This will look for any system files that were corrupted.
2 - Restore to a point in time before this problem began.
3 - Do a repair install from the OS disk
The symptoms seem to be hardware related. You should also download a temperature measuring utility and monitor the temps when the problem begins.
You could also try re-installing the video driver.
itgl72
5 Posts
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April 14th, 2011 14:00
"DOS" box I assume you mean. I'm doing that now. As a first step.
Yes, it does seem they always want to set the computer back to default. My biggest issue now is, extend the warranty, or not because I have two weeks. With intermittent problems that dont occur all the time, in my situation, time is not my friend.
itgl72
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April 14th, 2011 14:00
So far Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.