Inspiron 9100 & Radeon 9700 - Video Freezes or Goes Completely Blank

Question

I figured i'd try positing on the forum before making the call to tech support.   I have an Inspiron  9100  with ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 128 MB (M11).  Its starting to fail big time.    When streaming video off the internet it occationally goes pink/green/blue.     If playing Everquest 2 or Guild Wars the video will either momentarly freeze  and quickly go to a black screen and come back with distorted colours  the characters are now not properly rendered and  the water effects are now pinkish,blue and green, I've tried adjusting the in game settings to their lowest performance  values and still get simular results.      Here's what I've tried already   1) Complete reformat of the laptop.  Installed the Dell Video Drivers off the support site.  2) Used compressed air on on all the fans and heatsinks 3) Did another complete reformat and used the Omega Drivers 4) Installed the lastest version of Direct X directly from Microsoft's website. 5) Tried an external monitor    . In my original system configuration the video card is listed as this below    ATI TECHNOLOGIES INC, M11, 128MB, 9100 Any help would be greatly appreciated,

ejn63 · Answer

Attach an external monitor. If the problem shows up, you likely need to replace the video card. At a minimum, reseat it.

If the problem doesn't show up, reseat the flex cable between the LCD panel and the video card. If that doesn't fix it, replace the cable. If still problems, the LCD panel needs repair or replacement.

jwmattison · Answer

Hi. I have this exact same problem and I was wondering if you were able to solve it. I also have the additional issue of the display drawing one line at a time (all of them green) when I go to some web pages. I've tried the new catalyst drivers for ATI and different settings etc, but I'm not really looking forward to the idea of opening things up and reseating components.

If you happened to figure out the problem and could let me know that would be great. Otherwise I am stuck with the option of going for a refund.

Thanks,

Jason

SAngelatos · Answer

Any chance I can find out how to fix the video card?

blackhawkdoc64 · Answer

I am also curious if this problem has been resolved for you. I have the same problem with my Inspiron XPS with one difference that windows ocasionaly informs me that my video driver has stoped responding. At first the technical representatives told me that there were no known issues with my card but then changed their story and told me that there are known issues with my video card and the games I am trying to play. All of them (around 30).

What a gaming computer this turned out to be. Shame on Dell for it's low ethics.

SAngelatos · Answer

Yea, I just called Dell and they told me that nobody has had this issue, and that it was probably caused by somethind I did. So my warranty will not cover it.

jwmattison · Answer

I had the same kind of messages blackhawk and it started right out of the box.  Also, tried many other driver versions.  I got some messages about the hardware not responding to driver commands also.  I ended up just returning it.

uofg tech guy · Answer

Well i've tried the monitor for the past couple of weeks. Its an improvement but it still does the blackscreens and distorted colours etc.   So Im calling support.

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