Dell M3800 Display with horizontal bands/lines across screen

This seems to be an issues with many M3800's I've had 5 different machines displaying this issue. The horizontal lines come at 1/3, 2/3, and at the bottom of the screen (the one at the bottom is easy to miss.) If you run the built in display test, the lines don't seem to appear but they show up quite readily if you use 3rd party screen testing programs (I use PassMark MonitorTest), specifically on Grey and Green colors and screens with horizontal gradients where the color changes along the lines.

Definitely get it replaced, but don't be surprised if the replacement ends up doing the same thing. (I've had two different 'fixed' units have recurrences of this issue.)

Thank you for the reply.  Your experience is not very reassuring that this is an anomaly...I researched & purchased the M3800 because of using Autocadd and the need for a higher end laptop!

I did receive a replacement laptop from Dell...fingers crossed this issue does not return!

Just a me-too: exactly  the same issue, my machine is 6 months old and I'm waiting for the tech guy to replace it.

I'd just add that the bottom stripe is flickering noticeably.

I have the same issue from 13/01/2015. 3 technicall assists after (in warranty) and the problem is still present today. Now Dell require me more money for repair my product Dell M3800. I feel helpless and cheated ¿What I can do?

FYI, there seem to be a bunch of threads about this. See below. These are just a couple that I found in the past few days. Maybe, we need to combine threads to get a response from DELL. Seems, they are knowingly selling lemons, which is illegal.

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3519/t/19682256

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3519/t/19643081

Same problem here.  I'm on my 2nd replacement screen on my M3800 and the flickering just started again this morning - not 2 weeks after screen replacement  (note that they first tried motherboard replacement, then screen replacement - nothing works).  Dell definitely needs to find a fix for this.  The repair tech indicated that many times they send "refurbished" parts out for the on-site repairs, therefore the problem may not be getting fixed.  It must be a hardware issue as the system passes all of the diagnostic tests.  I'm seriously considering dumping this laptop in favor of something from another manufacturer.

I was told to update the BIOS by Dell at one point to A10

Some interesting findings from my screen issue - interested to see if anyone else has had the same problem with their M3800.

I had my screen replaced in May 2016 due to some dead pixels appearing - after a week I started seeing the problem with the screen flickering.

My suspicion is that a faulty or refurbished screen was used under warranty as a replacement screen. Needless to say, I've run all the tests (and them some more) above..

What I have noticed, is the vertical lines

• are always formed from the same colour as the very bottom row of pixels on my laptop screen, and
• they can change depending on the colour of the rows
• the vertical lines or blacked out screen can also happen when the computer is starting up (i.e. on the boot screen)
• if it happens on the Windows10 login screen the lines will be a different colour (the colour of the bottom row of pixels of the login screen), then they will change to the colour of the taskbar
• it's the same patch of screen affected, about 5/6th of the screen has the lines or goes black, the remaining 1/6th to the far right either shows the rest of the screen or goes white/black

Above: The external monitor is a duplicate of the laptop monitor. The light grey lines on the laptop screen are from the open applications (as can be seen in the taskbar on the duplicated monitor - chrome (offscreen), spotify, outlook, google keep, citrix). The lighter mid-grey area to the very left of the laptop screen is created from the Cortana "Ask me anything" field in the taskbar.

Above: Only one application open this time (chrome), therefore only one light grey verticle line. Each shade of grey corresponds to the colour of the bottom-most row of the screen (the taskbar in my case).

Tests I've done...

1. Safe mode:  flickering lines still present. Changing the resolution from low to native in safe mode seems to make the flickering problem more apparent.

2. External monitor:  no flickering lines on the monitor at all, only seen on laptop screen

3. LCD BIST - solid colours ok (although catching the flickering problem at the same time as the BIST test is difficult to do as the flickering happens a lot, randomly (and often makes my screen solid black/white after a while)

4. Diagnostics - through the Dell website, nothing found

5. Driver update - checked all drivers and rolled forwards to the latest, backwards to the most stable, doesn't make a difference.

omg exactly what im facing. so waht to do?

techdows.com/.../fix-screen-flashing-issue-in-windows-10.html

I used this blog as well. I posted my fix not long ago (see second to last post by M3800).

Good luck

Honesty... it took a screen change and a motherboard change to fix it. Never pinned it down to whether it was the screen or motherboard but pretty sure it was the mothwrboars. Dell replaced it under warranty. I had two screen changes.. on the second screen change the technician shorted my laptop out and blew the motherboard. After the replacement was installed the problem never came back.

It's very annoying but I tried all the gpu updates and process kills before looking at the hardware and nothing worked permanently.

Defo a hardware failure.

Same problem. 3 horizontal bands on the screen and warranty expired according to Dell. Did you solve the problem?