Dell XPS M1710 Red Migrating Pixels

Hi,

Ive bought a 2nd hand M1710 laptop - yeah I know - buyer beware.

Ive had it a few months, and Ive now noticed that the desktop has
Red Pixels on the screen.

They are not dead pixels, as they move about, disappear and reappear.

I dont know if this laptop has a warranty or not, or even if it did
if it would apply.

Ive read elsewhere about sometimes these red pixels can be caused by
a faulty LCD ribbon cable.

Ive taken the lid apart - carefully - following the service manual.

I did find that the grounding cable screw had no head, so the grounding
cable, which is part of the lcd ribbon cable wasnt connecting properly
to the lid chassis. I fixed that with another screw.

I thought that would fix it, but it didnt ;/

I then connected the laptop to an external monitor and found
that the red pixels appeared on that screen as well.

I should have done that first i guess.

I guess that eliminates the actual laptop screen.

So now it leaves the actual graphics card or maybe drivers.
Ive changed the drivers and that doesnt seem to affect it.
Ive tried the drivers from the Nvidia website, but is there a
specific driver thats preferable to use ?

or im left with the graphics card as being at fault ?

So where i can i buy a new or good 2nd hand card for this laptop
The card is NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS

thanks
cerveau

 

Your graphics card is at fault. It's already permanently damaged and the only solution is to replace it.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-notebook-chips-overheating,5815.html

 

Warranty details can be found here: http://support.dell.com/support/top...info/details?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=anavml

 

If you have valid warranty, what will probably happen is you will receive an Studio XPS 16 or Alienware M17x as replacement, because the cards are out of stock and they won't be able to do anything to repair this problem in the long run.

 

Thanks for the very helpful info and links

Ive entered the tag number into the warranty checker you kindly
supplied the link for and found that there is no warranty associated
with my laptop.

The other link you supplied refers to faulty Nvidia chips, how do I know
if my laptop is one of them?

Should I contact Dell or because theres no warranty, ill have source
a new card myself?

thanks
cerveau

 

There is supposed to be an extended warranty for specific machines with faulty Nvidia graphics cards, but I don't think the M1710 is on that list. Even if it is/was, the extended warranty only lasts a year longer than the standard warranty, so that'd probably be expired for you anyway.

So yeah, your best bet is probably to source a new GPU on your own. They're pretty expensive, though, and it may not be worthwhile.

 

Ive noticed a weird effect with this red pixel problem..
it seems to only appear when i run the laptop from the mains.

when on the battery power alone, the lcd screen is crystal clear
with no red pixels at all.

or maybe the missing grounding screw may have something to do with it.

Or ir could be the USB ports, because ive always run the laptop on the mains
with an external mouse, and most times an USB external HD.
With just the laptop alone, they dont appear.

so possibly any one of these could somehow involved, I realise i might
be grasping at straws and putting off the inevitable ie buy another gfx card.

obviously im going to have to do more testing and eliminating to find the cause