e1505 external display issues

Hi all.

Last September I bought two e1505 laptops but I've been having an issue whenever they are hooked up to an external display. Basically, there is an intermittent "hiccup" where either the internal OR the external image will flicker for a nanosecond. Usually the flicker doesn't happen at the same time on both screens. Since this problem happens on BOTH of the laptops, and they are both identical, I was wondering if anyone here had run into this problem before and had found a solution. I would really hate to spend another $3k-$4k buying replacements just because of an intermittent flicker, but truth be told, my job is running PowerPoint presentations for large corporate meetings and I can't have my screen flickering for an audience of 5,000 people.

So, anyone have any ideas?

 

First, if there is something wrong with the grounding this will happen.
Your Windows is XP I suppose.So you should get Catalyst Mobility 6.12 or 7.1/2 to fix this problem (I'm sure about 6.12 but I think it should work on the others)

 

Thanks for the quick reply. I doubt that it's a grounding problem since it's happening to both laptops and only when they are hooked up to an external monitor. I thought I had updated my ATI drivers and Catalyst software last month from Dell's site but just in case I'm including the info I have from the device manager.

Name ATI Mobility Radeon X1400
PNP Device ID PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_7145&SUBSYS_20031028&REV_00\4&1C9EC085&0&0008
Adapter Type ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 (0x7145), ATI Technologies Inc. compatible
Adapter Description ATI Mobility Radeon X1400
Adapter RAM 256.00 MB (268,435,456 bytes)
Installed Drivers ati2dvag.dll
Driver Version 6.14.10.6618
INF File oem0.inf (ati2mtag_M54 section)
Color Planes 1
Color Table Entries 4294967296
Resolution 1024 x 768 x 60 hertz
Bits/Pixel 32
Memory Address 0xC0000000-0xCFFFFFFF
I/O Port 0x0000EE00-0x0000EEFF
Memory Address 0xDFDF0000-0xDFDFFFFF
IRQ Channel IRQ 16
I/O Port 0x000003B0-0x000003BB
I/O Port 0x000003C0-0x000003DF
Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF
Driver c:\windows\system32\drivers\ati2mtag.sys (6.14.10.6618, 1.51 MB (1,578,496 bytes), 9/14/2006 11:14 AM)

 

You are pretty much screwed.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=99758

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=96456

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=95393

1. Dell never did me right.
2. Even though I bought a new laptop for 2007, I was professionally embarrassed.
3. I had to rent laptops for the live shows. $$$
4. I spent around a man week trying to fix the issue. All sorts of drivers, re-installed OS, switched OS from MCE to XP Pro, etc. $$$

Needless to say, although the rest of the laptop is really rather good, this is my last Dell ever. I had a SPECIFIC problem that was really causing me great pain and wasting a lot of my time, and Dell just really really really failed me.