Perhaps the heat is interfearing with the LCD cable?

Hi Have You Tried To Open The Hatch Near The Inspiron 8600 Label And Press On The Connector Attached To The Video Card , Try Pressing The Connector Downward And See If That Works.Give Us An Update.-Michael

Today I had the craziest thing with Dell Tech Support. I called and explained my problem and the first dell tech did actually listen to my problem but all he had to say was please do a diagnostics first and if any error messages appear then we know the cause immediately. So I did run the dell diag, strangely enough the diag failed on the confidence test. Appears that I have a faulty hard drive (which I hadn't noticed yet, since the errors were at the end of the drive)! So I called in again at Tech support and told them the result of my diagnostics. As soon as they got the error codes they had no more interest in my first problem with the graphics corruption on the lcd screen. The answer was , we don't support benchmarks !! Well I wasn't very happy with that, so the best answer the tech support guy could give me in the end was : "show the service engineer your other problem and he will take action if necessary".
Well I swear this , if the problem doesn't get at LEAST recognized by DELL then this machine will be RETURNED TO SENDER ASAP.
I will not live with a faulty machine and not get any service while paying full price for a 3 years on-site & complete care contract !!!

There are multiple threads on this message board about this problem and the 2 DELL support techs which I had on the phone apparently NEVER heard of this problem before !
I'm a very reasonable man , but if I'm not taken seriously by the end of the week then the postman will take the big box back to where it came from.

I pressed on the VGA connector as advised but the result is still the same. Thanks for the suggestion.

There is obviously a shortcoming in the DELL diagnostics : 3D ! A simple Direct3D test which could stress the GPU for a while would be sufficient. But at the moment there is no official supported way to test the GPU in the eyes of DELL.

I will keep my situation up to date as it evolves and I hope that Dell can provide a serious solution to this problem.

Cheers

OrinoccO

Message Edited by orinocco on 01-19-2004 06:20 PM

orinocco,

I am sorry that you had any problem with Dell Technical Support.  You will need to contact Technical Support again.  This time, after describing your problem, make sure that the technician understands that the problem occurs on the LCD, but does not occur on an external monitor.  The video test in the Dell Diagnostics tests the video card.  A problem that appears on the LCD, but not the monitor is not a video card problem, but an LCD problem.

 

well i had this probelm since day one. i have maxed out configuratiosn excluding ram i have replaced 2 lcd screens one sharp then one samsung and all i have to say is it HAS to be the video card. no way the odds of this happening 2 times. i run into the same stop gap solutiosn you all have by far the best is using powerplay and setting it to balanced. games play as they should i have 2 games that costs me EVERYMONTH that i cant play decently on this setting im sure its the video card

How Are These Dell Rep. Such as Rollie Telling That Its A LCD Problem. ITS A VIDEO CARD PROBLEM! These Rep's Dont Have Any Clue About Whats Going On, Out Of All People In the World They Should Know The Solution To The Problem, Not Wasting Peoples Time Telling Them That Its a LCD Problem . Its a Video Card Problem , You Should Ask For a New ATI Radeon 9600 128MB.By The Way Rollie I Was Wondering If I can Work At Dell Corp.- Let Me Know Soon.-Michael

abarick its a different problem then ours your flex cable is damaged you need a new one.

as for our current problem they have o assume its the lcd because th eproblem doesnt happen on an external monitor or tv so it just HAS to be the lcd... but tis not. i am extremely confident its either the video card or something connecting the video card to the lcd.

i have an old inspiron 8000, (still like it ) but recently, (4 months ago) a green vertical line become permanent on the lcd screen. Its about 2 inches from the right edge and extends from top to bottom. I write it off to either the display going bad or maybe the GPU. any other reasons you can think of ?

same problem :/

I have a similar problem too, but mine doesn't seem to mess up the 3D GFX in the game, rather it seems to only mess up 2D parts of the game and then Windows is messed up when I exit the game. It is clearly hardware because it carries on if you reboot immediately and messes up the BIOS screen.

I have had the LCD replaced in an attempt to fix it, but it isn't the LCD, it is the GFX card. The Dell engineer who came to replace my screen even told me it must be the GFX card when the screen replacement didn't fix it.

Of course, the fact that the corruption doesn't occur on external monitors is confusing the issue, but I figure it could be the GFX card has a problem with the wide screen resolution, or maybe it is something about the GFX card working differently with the LCD displays. It could even be a faulty connector, but it sure isn't the LCD itself.

I'm starting to think the best course of action is to tell the Dell techs that the external monitor displays the same problem because, in accordance with their training, they seem to go off in the wrong direction with the LCD then. You can't blame them, the is the logical explanation, but it is wrong.

I have an 8600  - PM 1.7 / WSXGA / 512ram / ATI 9600.