Screen randomly turns red and reboot is required

Question

Randomly, the screen of my Inspiron 700m (running Windows XP Home SP2) turns completely red with the exception of a few rows of pixels at the top which are different colors and appear to change color; but the rest of the screen remains red and a reboot is required to rectify the problem. Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn't have any effect. It doesn't happen too often and thankfully when it has occured, I haven't been in the middle of writing an (unsaved) document. It doesn't appear to be started by any specific application. What could be the problem? This laptop is probably a little over 6 months old. I have yet to call Dell technical support because I wanted to see if I could find a possible solution on here.

ejn63 · Answer

Does the same problem appear if you attach an external monitor?

Justin H. · Answer

I'm not sure; I never have used it with an external monitor (don't have the necessary cables either).

Niblick05 · Answer

I have the same problem with my Inspiron 6000. I've bought my laptop only five months ago but been having this issue pretty much since the purchase (I've started a thread on it a few months ago and got a few replies, so you might want to check that out.)
My screen, however, turns a different color each time: magenta, pink, purple, blue, green, yellow, etc. It's also been doing this more and more often. To rid of the problem, I put it in and out of standby. I'm going to run Linux for the next few days to see if the issue's related to Windows XP or to hardware. After that I'm calling Dell because this is getting very annoying. Last I talked to them, they had no idea what was wrong.
Oh, and I've tried hooking it up to an external monitor before and the laptop wasn't really sending the signal well to the monitor so that wasn't much help...

Ed700m · Answer

This is a problem for other people as well. The following threads illustrate:

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_video&message.id=139078

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_video&message.id=139556

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_video&message.id=138722

and from an independent forum:

http://www.700musers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=133

I have not solved the problem on my machine. I sent it back and they replaced the system board, but no change. I did a system restore from the backup partition and the problem still happened. I then reformatted the disk and did a clean install of XP Home, and used generic video and network drivers from Intel, instead of the ones from Dell (despite the warning to use OEM drivers). I also disabled one of the video adapters in the device list (there are two - Intel explains why on their support page - but I did it anyway).

The problem still occurs, but less frequently.

I'd really like to know how many users have this complaint. And, does it happen with newer 700m's, or was there a manufacturing problem back in late summer, when there seemed to be a number of reports of this during a short interval?

Ed

BklynBoy70 · Answer

I've got the same problem.  I called Dell support and they just blame Windows XP, but I've been working with laptops for the past 10 years with all variations of Windows, including XP, and I've never seen it before.  Has someone out there figured out what the problem is?

Ed700m · Answer

I *did* get my problem solved, withing the last few weeks. It turned out to be bad RAM.

I have summarized what I found in another thread. Please check out

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_video&message.id=139078

I sincerely hope this helps.

Ed

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