My Poor M1330 (PICS)

Hi All

The display of my M1330 has started to go wrong. For no apparent reason it will freeze and you can see a colours distort and pixel dots. Then it will go to a black screen and become unusable. When I restart sometimes I see a single thin red vertical line and have to rerestart. Other times the Dell startup splash screen will be pixilated. I have done a Bios update and a Geforce driver update and it still happens. I have reduced the colour display to medium and it has lasted long enough before freezing (to write this message). Other times I get a nvlddmkm (or something) error sayng my display has recovered from an error. Please Please help. I think it may be something wrong with the hardware but similar things have happened on other brands of computers so don't really know if it is software.

 

does this ONLY happen in Windows? Or also in the BIOS? If it happens in the BIOS then call up DELL and get a replacement or repair!

 

video card or video card ram died.

 

Yup. GPU is crapping it seems.

Prolly have to change the mobo.

 

yes, the NVidea Card has gone awry! Hope you get it replaced soon! BTW, very bad quality control in DELL products.

 

No no, that's the BSOD in Vista.

...

They went all 'arty'.

In all seriousness though, I would agree with the thought that this is your graphics card dying a slow horrible death. Sorry. Is this the stock card setup or have you overclocked it?

 

you have no idea if/how/when the user manhandled the computer. he could have been oc'ing the crap out of it.

 

just to add to this, he also seems to think that it arrived like that!

But if he properly read the post it says his m1330 has STARTED to mess up! And by the looks of all the fingerprints he's had the lappy for some time!

So it was working when it went through DELL QA, and thats what QA is about...testing to see if a product works there & then, not to see if its gonna work 5 months down the line!

 

I love how quick people are to slag Dell without knowing all the facts.

 

Too true, how many times have you bought something, and it works without any problems. Then you think to goto a forum and post up that it all works...

I need to remind myself, I've ordered a 1730, and reading this forums there are tons of horror stories. There are also thousands of happy customers out there....

 

And those are the ones you never hear from!

 

With so many defective M1330's, are you honestly pretending that they have competent QC? Even taking into account happy customers who don't post, so many messed up machines isn't normal.

 

This.

This website is a horror story website. That's a fact.

 

This is where Dell's come to die. Muahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaa...

*Cough*

 

Isn't it possible that the problem is corrupted video drivers?

 

he said that sometimes the DELL logo at startup is pixelated/messed up, so its not a driver issue! Only Windows and other OS's use drivers.

 

I have the same problem but it doesnt happen until the Welcome screen comes on in Vista and then it goes all pixeleted etc. Does this mean my drivers are messed as i did download new ones.

 

yup, that sound more like a windows/software issue! Try new drivers, if they dont work, then it MIGHT be a hardware issue, but seems more like software to me!

Do you get the pixelation when using MediaDirect?

 

OP!

QUICK - press on the lcd bezel to the left of the dell logo (at the bottom). Play with it and press firmly at different places. It should make your screen go crazy.

I have a very similar problem with my 1330, but not quite as bad as yours. Sometimes I just press in that area to see the pretty lines and colors

 

Thanks for your comments

I have been on the phone to Dell technical and they were excellent it has to be said.

When I previously updated the Geforce driver it seems I didn't remove it fully from the add/remove programs list before reinstalling the new driver version. I have since used the add/remove programs menu to completely uninstall it and have reinstalled the new version off the Dell site. No problems so far but it is early days....

Also I was told the operating system was not a clean cut as the division between hardware and software faults. For example the pixeled Dell startup splash screen may be software influenced (despite what I first assumed).

Cheers

 

and it all ends on a happy note