1558 screen freezes with solid colors

Hey all,

So I have a Dell Studio 1558 laptop. It will run for 15 minutes or maybe an hour, then suddenly the screen will turn either white, orange, or violet. I mean like one solid color. The computer does not respond to anything otherwise. I will need to restart. No other problems besides that. The laptop is about six months old. I tried searching some forums but most people have a different problem, one where they have lines on the screen and the screen flickers.


This happened in July ( I bought it in May) and I realized I had recently updated the graphics card driver. So I rolled it back and that solved the problem. Then recently, because of a virus problem, I reinstalled everything (Windows 7) using the Dell disks. All was well until the problem started occuring again. I updated and rolled back the driver and tried a few different GC drivers (there are a few different choices depending on what you're looking at, i.e., what your device manager tells you, what the Dell website tells you, or what the Intel utility tells you). The graphics card is the Intel ® HD Graphics card.

Nothing works, as I still have the problem. I have also done all the typical diagnostic stuff; check disk, the dell diagnostic utility, etc. Like I said, everything is fine on the unit except for that screen freeze problem. I have no video games, special configs etc.

I called support but they kicked it back to me saying it must be software related and my warranty doesn't cover any software related issue. Of course I tried, "Can you tell me what "software" exactly?" but no go on the "support" side of things.

So my only question is, am I on the right track? Is it the GC? Is it the GC driver or some other driver? I have updated the bios to the latest version, A10 but no change.

Thanks in advance!