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    Inspiron 6400 constant screen refresh

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by scol, Sep 7, 2008.

  1. scol

    scol Newbie

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    Trying to diagnose something I serviced for a friend of mine. I don't have it here in front of me, so I'll do my best to describe the problem as he tells me:

    During usage (gaming or not) the screen would occasionally go black, as if refreshing or changing resolution, and would come back. When this happens, if there happens to be a disc in the CD/DVD, it would spin up. All functionality continues to be fine despite this. I'm not sure if this happens at fixed intervals or not.

    When this occurs during gaming, sometimes it would refresh and he could continue to game normally. Other times, he noticed that with each refresh, the performance of the game would degrade with each occurrence and at about the 3rd one, it would be unplayable due to some sort of lag.

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    Some additional background:
    Prior to servicing the laptop, he had a dead graphics card (memory errors). I replaced it with a compatible x1400. Ran full diagnostics using Dell's built in utilities and everything came up fine so I went ahead and gave it back to him (This after a full reinstall updated to XP SP3 with all latest windows updates, and all latest Dell drivers from website).

    My first thought is bad card, but I really really would rather it not be the case. Drivers maybe? Any input appreciated.
     
    scol, Sep 7, 2008
    #1