Inspiron 5150 Severe Screen Fragmentation and Interference

Recently I bought a 5150 with Xp 1Gb RAM and Radeon9000. At first I have severe image fragmentation when running games. This I put down to a 3D redraw problem and reducing the hardware acceleration seemed to help.

It now happens within any applications. At least some of the icons in the start menu are never draw properly.

Below I have included some of my interaction with Tech Support.

Please help, Leon.

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Another strange thing happened this morning - just in case it is of
help.

I started the laptop and it was set in 1024 x 768 not 1600 x 1200. The
display settings only gave the highest res as 1024 x 768 so I couldn't
change it.

I restarted the computer and still I couldn't change the resolution. I
restarted again and this time I could set the resolution to 1600 x
1200.

Any more help with this problem is much appreciated.

Leon.

I have followed your instructions and have the following results:

1. With External Monitor. The external monitor output shows exactly
what is on the lcd at any time.

2. In Safe Mode. I tried booting into Safe Mode and it still happens
there.
I have seen the fragmentation present in the POST screens where it
often appears as random ASCII characters.

3. As there is no Reset button I tried the following - removed power
and battery for 5 minutes. This did temporarily clear the problem
but it returns. The problem seems to be worse when the system has been running for a bit.

4. I reinstalled the Video Driver whilst on the phone the first
time. This made no difference.

5. Dell Diagnostics. I ran the Dell diagnostics for Video and
Memory. These ran without error.

6. Ensured ribbon was pushed home. I lifted the strip covering the
LCD ribbon cable. This made no difference. Other things to note - Even when the display has not yet become
fragmented icons are not displayed properly. When the fragmentation develops it moves like interference patterns on
the screen often creating large blocks.

I originally thought moving the LCD screen up and down affected the
fragmentation / interference patterns. I since realise this was
probably more coincidental.

Other things I have tried - System Restore to before installing
Direct X 9.0a. This was the first Restore point I made. This made no
difference.

I originally thought this could be a driver or other corrupt file
problem as it only appeared to happen with games at first.
Now it can happen in any application even with hardware acceleration turned off.
More recently I believe this must be a hardware problem because of
the following -
i. it doesn't happen instantly if the system has been at rest and
when the problem appears the only way of curing it is to remove the battery
and power for as long as possible.
ii. the problem has been present in the POST and Safe Modes,
iii. the fragmentation / interference pattern changes / moves.

Could it be part of the video memory or intel control chipset is
damaged or functioning incorrectly?
I may be wrong. If there are any more ideas to try to diagnose this problem please feel free to suggest them.