Studio XPS 7100, display not working

Question

Hi,

I have a xps 7100 desktop that is acting up. I have upgraded it to Windows 10 using the standard upgrade path suggested by Microsoft. It was working fine after that when a week back all of a sudden the monitor started to go to screen save mode immediately after starting up. It goes on in that cycle where the monitor attempts to wake up and then goes to screen save mode. I then ran the diagnostics test on boot up (using F12) and this I got a VESA SVGA Video - Video memory test failed result with a code (5300-0119). The next test VESA SVGA Video - Video hardware test passes successfully. But the monitor has broken vertical lines.

Does all this mean that my video card is dead? Should it be replaced? I am attaching some screenshots.

Tesla1856 · Answer

Replace the video card? No, not unless it's free. :Smile:

I would not suggest spending real-money fixing an 8-year old AMD system. Even spending effort on it is questionable.

Props to you for finding ePSA Diags. But if ePSA is saying you have a problem, that is not a good sign. There is no guarantee that it's the video card.

If you can get Windows-10 64bit on un-verified Dells (and it works) good for you (I too have done it on some myself). But when you start having troubles, don't be surprised. While some machines are just too old to be tested, others are purposely excluded due to incompatible hardware. AMD stopped support for many cpus, chipsets, and video cards at Windows-8.

https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/sln297954/dell-computers-tested-for-windows-10-october-2018-update-and-previous-versions-of-windows-10?lang=en

RoHe · Answer

Are you using onboard AMD Graphics or an add-in video card, eg AMD or NVidia? If you're using an add-in video card, physically remove the card and connect the monitor to either the onboard HDMI or DVI connector, whichever your monitor supports, or with a HMDI>VGA adapter if needed. (You must physically remove the add-in card, otherwise the onboard video ports will probably be disabled.) If the problem goes away, the add-in card may have died. So just keep using the onboard video if you don't want to spend money on this old system.

Tesla1856 · Answer

@Novicecomputeruser wrote:

I am attaching some screenshots.

Now that we can see your pics.

Additionally, I will say ...

Sure, there are lines, but see how the ASCII Text is mis-spelled and scrambled ? That doesn't look like a simple "video card problem" to me.

It looks more like a bad motherboard. You won't know until it fixed. But like I said, not all old computers are even worth fixing.

XPS Desktops

Studio XPS 7100, display not working

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