XPS M1530 Screen help..

Hey guys,

If this is in the wrong place, inform me. I use a car forum in the same e-bulletin format but I couldn't find a sub forum for tech support.

First off, sorry for the long read, any help would be amazing!

A background of my XPS:

Was purchased when I started college with an extended warranty. I'm now set to graduate this spring and the computer is out of warranty. It's had countless motherboards, memory cards, heatsink & fan assembles, etc. replaced because of countless issues. Basically, it's never worked right since day one. Yet Dell never declared it a lemon or offered to replace it, they just kept throwing new parts at it.

Current problem:
Laptop has been working fine (stable) for the last 4-6 months. Last night I close the lid and it starts to hibernate normally. This morning, when I open it, I have no screen. To make a long story short, I tried resting it, taking the battery out, and everything. I decided I had seen Dell take the laptop apart so many times, I thought would try my hand at it. I opened it up and just made sure all connections were fine, then closed it up and turned it on.

I still get no screen when it's doing its boot up (where it displays the current BIOS update and all that) however I did finally get a log in screen.

My computer is now running normally, but my screen is out of whack. My start menu and toolbar is raised about an inch up on the screen, and in that space below is what appears within the top inch of the screen. (if this is hard to visualize, if I put my mouse at the top part of the screen, I can see my mouse in two places on the screen, and can see the web address i'm at now below the start menu)

The backlight is also very dim (wont respond to adjustment) and it looks like it's running at minimum bit-rate.

I did find one weird thing, I was telling my friend about it on MSN messenger, and he couldnt get a good idea what my screen was doing. So I took a screen shot and sent it to him. However the screen shot shows that my screen appears to be normal. So now I am 100% stumped as to whether it's a cable, a board, or the screen.

Any ideas? I'm not a comp wiz by any means, but I knew enough to take the laptop apart. Since I was able to get back on, I already have my hard drive backed up. So a new laptop is a route I wouldnt mind taking. However I would much rather wait until after I graduate if there is a fix for this.

Thanks for reading!

 

No one?

 

Does it work properly on an external monitor? I would say that the GPU has probably died again.

Please refrain from bumping posts with 24hrs.