Inspiron 1420: No video during POST

My sister asked me to fix her laptop (garbled video) awhile back. Finally got around to it last weekend. I replaced the video cable, inverter and LCD screen. It works GREAT now - but only once Windows has loaded. No video during Dell splash screen, or POST. First video is at Windows login.

It has an s-video and VGA output, so I have tried hooking up both of those, hoping it was confused and thought one of these outputs was the primary monitor. Still nothing until Windows.

Additional info: It has Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit, though it came with Vista. It still had video during the splash screen and POST before the parts swap.

I've searched the web, only to find a handful of people with a similar problem, but different circumstances/hardware, and irrelevant solutions, or no solutions at all.

I figure it can't be a driver problem, as no drivers are loaded before Windows loads. I thought maybe the new LCD (@ Amazon.com, and supposedly an actual Dell LCD) couldn't handle the resolution during POST, but 1) this seems unlikely since it should be a very basic resolution, and 2) surely, the external monitors and HD televisions would have been able to handle it. FWIW, it has the latest nVidia drivers for her adapter (an Geforce 8400M GS ... I've read all about the 'nVidia' defect, but don't think that's a player here.

I know she's happy that it's working, but I'm worried that down the road she'll need to have someone reinstall an OS, which will be impossible due to the lack of video during the boot process!!

Any thoughts/ideas?

Let this be another shameful plug why you shouldn't buy Dell.

 

Fairly certain this is the Nvidia issue, especially if you had garbled video earlier. It can manifest itself in strange ways in edge cases, which is probably what is happening here.

 

Thank you for the reply. I respectfully disagree. Why would it be displaying video (although discolored) during POST before the replacement, but not now? I personally think that would have to be an enormous coincidence (but I guess not impossible)! It just seems like it has to be another issue at hand, but I'm in an entirely different profession, so this is definitely not my area of expertise. Thanks again friend!

 

Well, have you tried putting the old screen back and seeing if it posts?

 

Sadly, no ... I was hoping it wouldn't have to come down to that since it was such a pain in the butt! Maybe I will try this weekend, but until then, I'm still open to other thoughts.

 

couple of things you can try provided you can hit F2 or the key to get to bios setup;
1. reset bios to factory and try (note all settings before resetting)
2. set a simple boot password (not for bios setup), that would force video at post. If password screen does not appear try hitting esc and that should display it, or disable by hitting F2, if not enter blindly.
3. do you have the latest bios update?
4. check bios memory settings for vga, can be messed since you changed components.

Also some windows drivers does a video bios update, check if you also have the latest video bios to support the Amazon LCD.

Lastly, having owned many machines I must say that Dell is more reliable than the others, for me HP is the worst in build and support.