M1330 Bios A15 + Latest intel drivers = dead video

Was having an issue on bios A12 (I think it was) with the brightness (function keys were not adjusting it properly), so updated the bios to A15 and the latest intel drivers as advised. (have intel, not nvidia).

Now the screen on boot is either blank or with only blue lines.

Can hear it booting into windows so the system on the whole seems fine.

Have got it working successfully on an external monitor via the vga port. I have tried to reapply the A15 bios and reinstall the intel drivers but not changed anything. The display properties in windows shows the laptop monitor as stuck on 640x480 and low colours. screen is off on 640x480 and if upped to the only other option 800x600 gives blue lines.

Have run the dell diagnostic tool and has given me the following error:

"exception occurred in module video.mdm file "lcd.cpp". line 1070!".

Any Ideas?

 

I can tell you that there are still issues with brightness level in A15 with the X3100 intel graphics. What you notice is that the maximum brightness level may not be reached. Instead it's stuck at some point although the power plan as well as the dell quickset utitlity promote a brightness level of 100%.

From my observation this bug can be triggered by two behaviors:
a) While booting to Windows (Vista) reduce the brightness level. In Windows you then can't go beyond the brightness level you adjusted to while booting
b) after crashes the maximum brightness level might be stuck somewhere

In both cases it helps to reboot, enter the BIOS and reset the maximum brightness level to maxmium for DC and AC configuration.

I'm an A15 as well. I have
v15.12.1.1608 (7.15.10.1608) dated 12/09/2008 installed.

There's also v15.11.5.1624 (15.11.5.1624) dated 01/12/2009 available.

Last time I ran dell diagnostics, I didn't have that problem.

Maybe try to uninstall the intel driver or revert back to A12 before trying again?

 

Firstly thanks for the response.

Reverted back to the old bios A12 and previous intel driver with the help of an external display but still laptop monitor not giving a decent output.

Have tried with ubuntu (to remove video drivers etc from the equation) and no go there either.

Leading me to believe its a rather low-level problem and most likely monitor or possibly bios.

ideas or anyone had anything similar?

 

What do you mean by "decent" output? Is the output wrong/broken prior to OS load - regardless of Ubuntu or Windows? Is the way it is broken in Ubuntu and Windows the same?

Now that it works, you might want to narrow your problems down whether it is related to the BIOS update OR the intel driver. Instead of updating both simultaneously, just update one.

There's also A14 available in case you want to try this one:
http://ftp.dell.com/bios/M1330A14.EXE

 

the only current output is 5 blue lines on the screen, prior to OS load and none-changing.

Laptop monitor has not improved, only the external monitor gives an output.

Have tried A12, A14, A15 and the current intel driver and the previous intel driver in every combination.

Hopefully Dell will have something to say.

 

Your last postings suggests that even A12 BIOS and old intel drivers result in 5 blue lines. Then it's very likely that this is just coincidence that the LCD broke while updating BIOS and intel drivers.

Maybe the cable from the mainboard to the LCD get broken - can happen at any time since opening the lid twists this cable slightly.

If you are an experienced user you may perform some more investigation:
. e.g. checking in igfxcfg.exe whether the EDID information from the LCD panel is correct or by using this tool:
http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/moninfo.shtm
If it's not correct it would explain why you can only select 640 x 480 and such

. since you bootet linux you may also check /var/log/Xorg.0.log since it dumps similar information about the panels it detects during startup of X.

 

moninfo did give some interesting information:

The monitor it detected as: 13.4inches but, as wrongly detected as:

native resolution at: 1280x800 and not 1400x900 as it should be and, color bit depth as "Undefined".

Seems like the monitor then.