Hi all,

After doing some research, I found some advices to this type of problem, and seemed to worked well until now, as I have managed to have my laptop running with the nVidia card enabled without problems all Sunday, and today as well. Here is what I did:

1) I downloaded the nVidia drivers for the GeForce 8400M GS card from Dell's support page, as they are not available trough the nVidia's site:

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&ServiceTag=&SystemID=XPS_M1330&os=WLH&osl=en&catid=&impid=

2) I installed some of the Vista hotfixes recommended by the nVidia's site:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/windows_vista_hotfixes.html

Some of these where already installed previously by Windows Update, so after downloading them and running the installer, they sent the message "This update doesn't apply to your system". I downloaded and tried to install all of them just in case I was missing any (which was the case).

3) I don't know if this helped in any way, but I also set in the nVidia control panel my preferences emphasizing "performance" instead of "quality". I read this advice in some other forum, but like I said, I'm not sure if it actually helps.

I hope this can help anyone having this kind of problem. jacksmcc and pmayo, it would be great if you try this (if you haven't) and confirm if it really does help fix your problems.

Did any of you do a windows update and install the NVIDIA graphics driver from the microsoft site?? I did and it seems rolling back to the one on the Dell site and applying the fixes seemed to work...

I have Windows Update enabled, so when trying to apply the hotfixes from the Microsoft site, they were already installed in my laptop. All but except one, the Kb936710. I'm really not sure why it wasn't installed before, but its seems that this hotfix solved the problems I was having (alongside with all the others of course).

I continue to have no problems at all for a third day in a roll.

Ok, bad news. My display stopped working again this afternoon. I'm blaming the display because I could hear normal Vista sounds, so the computer wasn't freezed at all, just the display. I restarted, and in the bios loading cycle(even before any drivers were loaded) were the same weird color lines. I didn't touched the laptop so I could see if this would go away, and it turns out it loaded Windows Vista (I heard the welcome sound).

I restarted it a couple times until the display worked correctly. Started in safe mode, and after disabling the nvidia card, the display went black and returned with many weird color pixels, although it still worked.

I restarted again, now in the windows normal mode. It work ok, but sometimes the display just stops working and shows vertical white and gray lines, then after a couple of minutes it works again.

I really think this is a 100% hardware issue. I don't know if it's a defect in the backlit LCD, or as pmayo said, a hardware issue related to Video RAM.

If anybody got a solution, please help us. I'm contacting Dell's support anyway

I have had a similar problem with my XPS M1330. At first it was intermittent, then it got to the point where I could not boot. As soon as I hit the power button I would get the vertical lines. I talked to Dell Support today and they had me run a diagnostic to see if it was the LCD or the Motherboard/graphics card (Fn key + Power button). The LCD checked out so they are sending someone out to replace my motherboard later this week. Hopefully that will fix the problem. If not, they said their next step would be to replace the LCD.

After having my mainboard replaced, I haven't had any more display problems. So, it's definitely a hardware issue. I'm guessing video RAM going bad.

They sent someone out to replace it.

I don't remember the exact number, but it's the one listed in your documentation for XPS Support. If you can't find it I can dig my documentation out and look it up. edit: I can't get a link to work, but if you look on their support page there is a list of their US Support phone numbers.

Message Edited by nathanrt on 01-21-2008 03:40 PM