What would be causing this video problem?

Vostro 1700 with Windows Vista Home Basic
WUXGA, NVIDIA 8400M GS



After doing a Dell Factory Restore, my graphics are all messed up. Gradients are not smooth, flicker, and have a lot of greenish fringe. It almost seems like its stuck in a poor VGA mode. I have updated the BIOS and Nvidia drivers from both Dell and Nvidia support websites. However, the problem exists outside of the operating system, such as in the boot, diagnostic, and bios screens. The text on those screens is not sharp and has the greenish fringe.

Any ideas of what could have happened? The graphics were perfect before doing the Factory Restore. Could that have caused the graphics card to go bad?

My understanding is that the graphics card is integral to the motherboard, so the whole thing would need to be replaced. What would be my best way to replace it? Do I have to bite the bullet and go through Dell? (Of course, I'm 20 days outside of my warranty.)

Thanks!

 

look like low color bit rate , maybe 256 color , you need to re-install your video driver or reset it back to 24-32bit in the control panel.

 

Thanks for that idea. It is set to Highest 32-bit color actually.

 

Just realized you have an NVIDIA 8400M GS , it could be a faulty GPU , Nvidia made some with faulty solder and a lot have been failing, some manufactures have been extending warranty to 2 years for this problems, so you need to ring them and find out.

 

Thanks, again. I did call them. And as you might expect, NVIDIA claims no responsibility for the installation of their chips in Dell manufactured boards.

 

It looks like dell`s only response to the faulty Nvidia GPU`s was to release a new bios to make the fans come on sooner to cool the GPU.

I would have hoped that you would have had a better response from other dell owners, and advise on how to proceed, but give it time.

 

You are right about some NVIDIA chips. Calls to Dell indicate some boards with NVIDIA chips did have their warranties extended, but mine, the 8400, didn't.

My latest test was hooking up a secondary display to the port on the side of my laptop. It displayed perfect on the secondary, but not on the laptop. So should I deduce that it is an LCD problem and not a motherboard/graphics problem?