D610 Vertical Lines Video Problem - HELP!

I too have a user with exactly the same problem.  He reported the lines were showing even before Windows was loaded, so it's not a driver problem.  I'll be watching for other responses too - but just for your information - you are not alone.  I'll post if I find an answer.

Make that three. My D610 works fine in the port replicator, but as soon as it's powered up and using the laptop screen, I get a bunch of vertical bars. Mostly wide white ones with thin colored lines mixed in. This is right at power up, so it's not OS related.

Message Edited by dgeiste on 06-19-2005 02:01 PM

And one more.

There is clearly some serious unresolved hardware issue here. Mine started doing it after about a week of use. It's intermittent, comes and goes without rhyme or reason.

As others have stated, when it shows up, it's there at the bootup password screen long before anything loads, so it's clearly a hardware issue.

A hint for any Dell engineering techs who may be reading this: What seems to be happening is that certain non-pure (ie. not all black, not all white, not all red, etc.) colors are dropping down to 8 bit or even 4 bit color, displaying as a solarization on grads (graphics with gradations, like the circle in the upper left hand corner of the XP login screen), and vertical green stripes on 'not-quite-pure-white' images. In other words, it feels like one of the (major) bits in either R, G, or B is intermittently disappearing, but not when the colors are pure (ie. 255,255,255).

A remarkably annoying problem, especially since it's intermittent.

I'll be calling support tomorrow (Monday). This will be my first experience with Dell tech support, and we'll see if I get the "no one's reported this problem before" response I'm used to from other vendors.

Just wanted to add more information. When this happened, I had just pulled my laptop from the port replicator. I use and external monitor and have no problem while viewing with an external monitor. The laptop was warm at the time since it had been up and running for several hours.

This morning, and with the laptop cool, I turned it on and video was normal.

So, this may be a heat related issue.

Please let us know what Dell Support has to say on the issue - I will not be able to contact them until next week at the earliest when I have one of the troubled systems in my possession to "run diagnostics" with a Dell Tech over the phone.

Good to know I'm not the only one, hopefully one of us can find a solution soon enough - keep the posts and updates coming, thanks everyone!

It could be heat-related, but I have reports from users who have powered on their laptop first thing in the morning and been greeted with the colored lines. In fact in the example I'm thinking of, it was a brand new employee who had just powered on the system for the first time after it had sat dormant on his new desk over the weekend. Hopefully Dell has an answer soon as it appears to be an issue that is affect many systems.

I let mine heatup this morning, took it out of the port replicator, and it was fine. So, this is not a heat thing, but a very intermittent problem.

Turns out others where I work are also experiencing the same problem.

Our help desk has been in touch with Dell and they have shipped a new LCD display. It will be replaced tomorrow. I'll post again to let everyone know if that fixed it.

In case anyone wants to see what the problem looks like on a graphic with gradients, I've taken a couple of pictures of my screen wallpaper (company logo), with and without the problem, which can be seen here:

http://www.bluescreen.com/pix/D610%20OK.jpg

http://www.bluescreen.com/pix/D610%20NOT%20OK.jpg

The thin green vertical stripes which are part of the same problem appear on things like explorer windows, etc.

Direct sunlight?    Had an interesting comment from my main evaluation-tester this morning.  He found that the problem is almost always happening when the laptop is exposed to direct sunlight.  That does not mean it won't happen other times too - but it might be significant in reproducing the problem.

Oh, you aren't going to believe this!

Found - using a direct lightsource, like a high-powered flashlight - we can now reproduce the problem on demand.   While the light source is on the LCD, and the screen is doing major refresh (like from fullscreen text to graphics) - the lines appear.  Sometimes we can make them move simply by moving the light source.

escalating now to Dell support.

 

 

Wow, that's certainly an interesting twist - keep us updated!

Have not been able to reproduce that here. Perhaps I don't have an intense enough flashlight...

Blue11, mine doesn't look like that at all. The title of this thread is "vertical lines." Yours looks like circles.

The problem I'm having are thick white bars going vertically from top to bottom with 2 or 3 pixel width colored lines.

Also, when I experienced my problem, it was not exposed to direct sunlight... which seems odd.

Dgeiste, for the record mine does not look like Blue's either, and that's not the problem I'm having - based on the description you made of yours earlier in this thread I would say that you and I are having the same problem whereas Blue's seems different. Again my problem is the white/colored lines, almost looks like a vertical 'test pattern' image that covers about 2-inch part of the screen at various times. Thanks for the updates guys.