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53570
Inspiron 3137 freezes up with glitchy screen
Laptop connected to AC, with freshly installed W8.1 with latest drivers available on the site, latest BIOS too. Inside the changes are the 4GB memory module (was thinking it might be that tested it with memtest86 - ran for 2+ hours with no problems), and A-DATA SP900 SSD.
Then I thought it might be GPU or overheating (even though I have not ruled that out completely, since I was more or less away from it when it happened couple times) but it ran Unigine Valley for two and a half hours with no issues and 68*C according to GPU-Z.
[Update] Ran OCCTPT in PSU testing mode (both GPU and CPU usage), temps are kept strictly under 70*C, power under 15W (since TDP is 15) and clocks are dropped to about 1.22GHZ on cpu and 850mhz on GPU. So I cant imagine that it can overheat with that sort of control. Something else probably can, but all the temps HW Monitor can actually check are good.
It's not the LCD cable, since position does not matter and reboot (4 sec turn off/on) fixes it. Though sometimes after reboot wi-fi does not work and I need to go to network connections and turn it off and on there for it to work. So might be somewhat power saving related. Since the first time it happened it was idling in chrome with no activity on wifi, and wifi was not working after that reboot. But next time it happened when I was making system backup with built in W8 utility to a NAS via Wi-Fi. And Wi-Fi worked after that.
Windows system event log has pretty much nothing of interest in it before reboot, stuff like system restore points do not need to be updated e.t.c.
So to sum it up, last 3 times it happened : Chrome was opened with a blank page and I was away from it, next time I was reading stuff from a website and it just did that, and the last time system was creating a restore image of the hdd and I was away from it.
Here's how it looks in static : http://imgur.com/h52IxaF and here's a video of it in action :
You can sort of see some parts of the desktop through that and some regions seem to look just like random garbage.
Apart from drivers and DX/VC++ there are Nod 32 antivirus v7 installed, Chrome, and Classic Shell start menu.
On the agenda have gpu-z and coretemp/speefan run in background with logging enabled to check for temps when it happens, and well reinstall W8.1 if everything else fails.
It would be awesome if someone can point me to the root of the issue or at least where to dig for it (software/hardware e.t.c.).
Hotcooler
5 Posts
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February 10th, 2014 06:00
As an update. Problem was resolved.
Hardware was just fine, the problem was with Windows 8.1, for some reason if you have 8.1 this would happen. I have no clue why it is the way it is, but with win 8.0 it works flawlessly.
So if you have this model I would be wary of upgrading to win 8.1 and make a backup before, if you decide on doing so.
727stretch
140 Posts
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January 30th, 2014 18:00
Hi,
I had pretty much the exact same issue with my older XPS M1330 laptop (sporadic pattern on screen - looked identical). Ended up being a bad motherboard, which was replaced under warranty. I had upgraded the memory & hard drive and that did not cause any issues with the warranty. Hope that helps.
N7U
615 Posts
0
January 30th, 2014 20:00
Hi Stretch,
a couple days ago I had a member complaining of similar symptoms. The pattern wasn't the same, but like yours it was geometric. I didn't read anything in your post that mentioned re-seating the memory modules. Give it a shot and if you need futher assistance don't hesitate to contact. If this answer was helpful please remember to hit the YES button. GOOD LUCK!
Hotcooler
5 Posts
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January 31st, 2014 04:00
Re seating memory wont solve anything here, since memtest86 finds no errors and other torture tests like OCCTPT work just fine, since I ran out of the ideas I've reinstalled W8.1 this time with just the drivers, so far it works (about 3 hours) so I'm sort of hopeful that it was some sort of software issue, but well.. to me it looks like more than that - we'll see I guess.
If it still works till tomorrow will install rest of stuff and see if anything changes, will report back on that. If not, to warranty people I go...
Hotcooler
5 Posts
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January 31st, 2014 08:00
Unsurprisingly it happened again, so off to warranty tomorrow...
727stretch
140 Posts
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February 10th, 2014 12:00
Was it Dell / Service tech who gave you that answer? Seems a bit off to me, unless it was a bad driver. But glad ya got it fixed!
Hotcooler
5 Posts
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February 10th, 2014 13:00
Yeah, I found it hard to believe at first, the tech just said it's the OS. I once again reinstalled win 8.1 from the SL x64 image I made and it once again failed, after that I've installed regular win 8 and it just worked fine. So it is probably a driver issue, but I was not able to pinpoint which one. My thoughts that it's related to power saving stuff, but who knows.
JAKKLZ
3 Posts
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April 8th, 2015 11:00
I have a similiar issue. Upon removing the rear cover to check the battery and reassembling, I cannot use the laptop on an uneven surface. If I pick up the laptop the screen changes colors and is very glitchy. As soon as I place it on a flat surface, the screen is perfect! Would I have knocked something loose?