Please Help!! Inspiron Laptop screen colours are inverted (negative)

hi guys

I’ve got a Dell Inspiron 1545 and the colours on the screen are inverted! This happens in the bios and continues through to windows. Dell diagnostics seem to show the displays working OK but theres a few colours on the test colour strip that appear a bit darker. When it plugs into an external monitor its fine so I’m assuming the graphics card is OK.
I’ve replaced the hard drive, reseated the RAM and installed windows 7 updated all the drivers and bios with still no avail. Also unplugged the monitor to motherboard connector and cleaned it.

Ive run out of things to test\do! Im a PC technician so please feel free to give a non-laymans explanation\fix

Thanks guys
Rory

 

If it happens in the BIOS, then you have an LCD issue. You'll need to get the screen swapped out under warranty.

 

It’s not under warranty anymore – it’s a right piece of junk, first of all the hard drive went so I had to replace that!

Your probably right about the screen needing replacing, however I don’t want to spend all that coin if it’s not the problem. Can I just pick your brain again? The bios on these machines is a sort of quasi-graphical user interface, however it goes to full bios when it does the diagnostics. The diagnostic screen is yellow with black text – this looks pretty normal but not sure if it’s the right colour? The text appears fine on this screen (apart from the odd colour arrangement)

When it goes back to windows, not only are the colours inverted but their pretty hard to read, and there’s a large patch of the screen which looks like it’s got pressure on it, which doesn’t show in the GUI bios or the diagnostics.

Cheers

 

The diagnostic screen doesn't look right, the BIOS is blue with white text, and I think the diagnostics uses the same color theme. What color does your BIOS appear to be? Yellow with black text does appear to be inverted...

 

The bios is dark grey with white text, very hard to see it. The mouse is black with a white border around it. The dell logo is black, but again very hard to see

 

That definately doesn't seem normal, unless the Inspiron has a different BIOS than in the Latitudes. I'm betting it's probably the screen.

 

I just had a D-620 that had similar symptoms. Couldn't it be a High Contrast setting in the Display properties? Or it could the LCD, or even possibly the inverter. I took an inverter from a D-610 and put it in the others place and it did not change. But took the LCD from the D-610 (even though they were different sizes) and it worked. If you can find another LCD to test then you would know if it were the LCD or not. Can you connect the laptop to an external monitor and it look OK? If you plug it in and it looks the same, i think it could be the GPU or even the mother board. Don't quote me on that though. LOL. I would start by trying to acquire a LCD to test to pin point the issue. Good luck.

 

Had a similar problem on my inspiron 1545. The colors got all screwy, looked like it got crushed. It turned out to be a loose lcd cable. Right where the LCD cable plugs into the mother board. You have to remove the cover where your speakers are, then remove the keyboard. The cable is right under the keyboard on the the left side. Just jiggle it/push on it.

I don't know if that is your exact problem. This cable gets loose all the time though and I've gotten use to always having to remove the keyboard just to push on that connector to fix my screen.

My dell studio 1458 arrives today so hopefully it's a better build quality then the inspiron.