E6500 display issue

Hi all,

I've had my E6500 since October. When I turned it on a few days ago (from hibernation I believe) the display was, well, terrible. It was set to 640x480, and the colors were set to 8-bit (or lower). Basically, it looked like many of the colors were inverted or just plain off. I am running Vista Business and my graphics card is the nVidia Quatro 160M. Here's what I've tried so far:

1. Going to display options. When I look there, the resolution slider is disabled.
2. Going to device manager. The display is properly listed as "Nvidia Quatro 160M" and it says the device is working properly.
3. Restarting, blah blah.
4. Reinstalling the display driver. More on this below.

So I tried reinstalling the driver. First of all, it seems Dell removed their display driver for the E6500 from their support site, so I downloaded nvidia's. While I was downloading the driver I uninstalled the existing display driver. BAM! As soon as it was uninstalled the color and resolution were correct (1920x1200). Not after I restarted, I mean the instant the uninstall was done. Of course everything was slow (moving windows caused display lag) due to the lack of any display driver. I restarted then, and the resolution/color were wrong again. Not yet discouraged, I installed the nvidia driver. It went off without a hitch, and as soon as it was done installing the resolution/color were correct again! I restarted to finish the installation, and guess what? They were wrong upon startup.

Another thing I've noticed: sometimes on startup the welcome screen is correct for a split second before being "corrupted". It doesn't seem to happen every time, though.

Anyone ever heard of anything like this? I hadn't installed anything new in the past month, at least. I'm leaning towards blaming Vista, as it seems unlikely to be a hardware problem. I haven't yet tried reverting to the last known good configuration. However, given the fact that Windows seems unaware than anything is wrong I doubt that will work.

Anyone got ideas here? I'm debating putting Ubuntu on it and seeing what happens.

 

I would install the latest nVidia driver from Dell for the E6500 and your OS:

Release Date: 4/6/2009
Version: 7.15.11.7947, A06

I had similar nVidia issues but so far so good with latest install.

GK

 

Like I said, I installed the latest nVidia driver and it didn't fix the problem.

 

You said you couldn't find the Dell download... I could and suggested you find it and try it.

You said you uninstalled the driver while waiting for the nVidia download, and the resolution changed to 1920x1200. This is unusual since the typical resolution when you uninstall the OEM driver is plain low res VGA.

You described other odd behaviors after installing the nVidia download.

Assuming the Dell download will not help, I can only conclude you have a video hardware fault and should contact Dell for support. They will first tell you to install their download, not nVidia's.

GK

 

OK, that's true, I will try to find Dell's driver. However, on my desktop running an nVidia I always see a resolution of 1680x1050 when I uninstall my display driver. Everything is laggy, but it runs at the native resolution.

I'll try the Dell download. I was looking under the category of "Display", but it's under the category of "Video" for some reason.

 

I installed Dell's driver and it seems to have fixed it. When I installed it the problem still existed, but then I started nVidia Control Panel, which asked if I wanted to use the native resolution. I clicked yes, and since then it's been correct. Since the problem seemed to appear out of nowhere, I'm apprehensive it might return, but I'm happy it's working.

Thanks for your help, GKDesigns!

 

I may have helped, but you and I both seem to appreciate that these issues tend to be real and return. Hopefully it was just a confused driver setting.

Meanwhile, I've dared to install nVidia's just released driver. I figure at some point Dell stops updating their downloads and I will be forced to continue system maintenance with OEM drivers, so I decided to jump now since the nVidia driver release seems quite official and I don't want to wait for Dell's sanction... video bugs have been a problem on this system so I want to get the latest fixes sooner and test 'em out before this notebook leaves again for college campus in August.

GK