inspiron 1501... white screen w/ vertical lines

it's running WinXP, AMD dual core, 1 gig ram, 120 gb hd...

seems to happen when i'm in any application. it'll kick me out and i'll have a white screen with blue or purple vertical lines. bought new in June of this year and it's been happening almost daily for the past 3 months.

2 days ago, i finally decided to reinstall windows XP. i did this and i still have the problem and it seems to have gotten worse. just today i got the error 4 times! and the last time i just got a solid blue screen. it's never happened this often before.

i called dell tech support. they seem to think it's bad ram so they're sending me new ram to try out. it's not the BSOD... it just mostly the white w/ stripes screen or, like the last time, a solid blue screen... no text.

i searched the posts and found somewhat similar experiences but not quite the same. anyone have this problem or can offer any advice?

thanks...

 

most likely a faulty video card

 

So that means return?

 

well, dell sent me the new ram but i haven't tried it out yet. what i DID do was flash the bios to the new version that was made available in Sept. so far so good. it's my wife's laptop and she says no freezing so far (been about 4 days with moderate usage). normally it would've had an episode or two already.

she DID saw that it feels a little slower. not sure how exactly (internet or applications) but i'll update when i find out more.

hopefully it's not a faulty video card. i still have warranty through june 08 but i'm sure the downtime will be several weeks to get that fixed.

 

I had the exact same problem happen yesterday for the first time on the same laptop with the same configuration, white screen with blue vertical lines.

Can you please explain the process you used to flash the BIOS? Thanks.

 

pretty simple... you can find the bios download on dell's website:
http://support.dell.com/support/dow...-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=1&fileid=222384

download and install. only takes a few minutes. it's been about 5 days now and no problems =)

 

Thanks. I just downloaded the new BIOS right before your reply. Dell calls it critical and urgent. You think Windows Update would have picked this up????

Hopefully this solves the problem. Thanks for your help.

 

well, it's not a "windows" update. it's dell specific i believe.

hope it works for you. i'm still keeping an eye on it... hopefully it's a permanent fix!

 

my wife has a vostro 1000 (same as 1501) and she gets the same thing. the dell rep said I need to buy more ram and 1 gig has been documented to not be enough for vista (I have 1 gig and it's running vista basic). I complained and asked why they would sell me a machine that as sold, has been documented to not function properly. the dell rep paused and said...good point. But the rep never told me about this new bios thing. I wonder if it will help the vostro.