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Dell XPS m1730 Screen Repeatedly Flashing Red, Green, Blue, White, and Black

post #1 of 13
2/22/10 at 3:29am
Thread Starter 
Hello,

I'm starting this new thread here because I hope that maybe this problem is not confined to only my brand and model of laptop, and that other users have seen or heard of it before.

I own a Dell XPS m1730 notebook. The notebook is nearly 19 months old. Yesterday morning while browsing the web and uploading photos to Flickr, the notebook froze with the screen flickering a still image of the web page I was viewing. It was unresponsive, and I had no option but to shut it off. Now when I boot it up, the screen repeatedly flashes red, green, blue, white, and black about 1 second apart. I don't get any Dell booting display or any POST information, but the laptop does boot into Windows Vista because I can hear the Windows loading sounds and I can shut it off by hitting the appropriate keystrokes from memory.

Has anyone experienced anything similar? Are my graphics cards fried (dual Geforce 8800 GTX in SLI)? Or could it be that some connecting cable between the display and the graphics cards is loose or broken? Maybe it's the LCD display itself?

I tried connecting the laptop to my TV to see if it's a problem with the LCD screen, but I either don't remember the correct keystrokes to switch to it, it's not fully set up in the Nvidia Control Panel, or this is also part of the problem because I can't get that to work.

I've seen detailed disassembly instructions for my laptop online, but I'm very reluctant to do anything of that caliber myself for fear of making things worse - especially since I don't know what the problem is.

I sincerely welcome any educated guesses as to the source of this issue. This laptop is my baby. My sole source for news, music, movies, games, and communication in a foreign country - not to mention an essential productivity tool for my job. It's only been a day since the problem appeared and I'm already very anxious and really depressed. I don't have the money for another one. Please help.
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post #2 of 13
2/22/10 at 1:24pm
Have you tried pointing a flash light onto the LCD and see if any screens showing?

What about trying with an external monitor instead of a TV? This would be easy to toggle from FN key.

Based on what you described I tend to think about a failing LCD rather than bad graphic card.

cheers ...
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post #3 of 13
2/22/10 at 4:05pm
Follow qhns advice, use the function key to toggle the screen... It can be a sign of the LCD failing (I have seen similar), but first things to do are to check the connections between motherboard and inverter and inverter to screen...
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post #4 of 13
2/23/10 at 10:06pm
Thread Starter 
Thank you for the suggestions guys.

I purchased a DVI to VGA adapter yesterday and tried hooking up the laptop to one of the monitors at my work. The external monitor gave what I assume was a "signal out of scan range" or "no signal" message (I work in Korea and don't have such a firm grasp of the language) when trying to switch displays once Vista booted on my notebook.

When I tried switching displays during the boot process, I got a garbled Windows Loading screen and then my laptop blue-screened (too quick for me to make out exactly what the error was) and reset itself. It failed to boot into Windows after that. I imagine it was getting the same blue screen and restarting itself but couldn't see it on either my LCD or the external monitor (my LCD keept flashing RGB, and the external monitor would give me the same error message in Korean).

The laptop did boot into Windows again when I got home. Just a wild guess here but maybe that's because the laptop heated up and that caused whatever was broken (cracked GPUs?) to throw up those blue screen errors. While at home it had a chance to cool and boot into Windows without errors.

I am no longer under warranty, but gave Dell XPS support here in Korea a go. Through one of my co-workers, I was able to get across my specific problem. They think its the graphics card, and say it's too expensive to fix.

Do you guys think it's worth investing over a thousand dollars (that's the impression I'm getting) to fix a laptop which is over its warranty? What if whatever gets fixed fails again in a few months?

I'm heading up to Seoul to visit their repair center there in person tomorrow, and a part of me was thinking (the part that is really beginning to hate Dell products) of dumping the notebook on the counter and asking if they'd give me any money for it.

Thanks again for your kind input.
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post #5 of 13
2/24/10 at 9:19am
Graphic card replacement can be expensive. The part itself is expensive. It is all up to you if you want to fix up the comp, but seeing that Dell earlier models having issue with GPUs failures, I would say save up your $ and invest in a newer model.

cheers ...
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post #6 of 13
2/24/10 at 10:56pm
Expensive to fix, expensive to get something new. Probably "new" is money better spent, but it's likely to be slightly more money for the same power.

Less than two years old is sad. My 7900 lasted 3 years but was replaced under warranty. Next time (if you go new) if it's available in your region, get the warranty if you can manage the budget for it. Hard to watch what is otherwise a very good machine go down.
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post #7 of 13
4/4/12 at 10:01am
I have the exact same Dell laptop model and same graphics card and the same thing just happened to me. I saw the other threads on your comment and no one seemed to understand your issue and were way off the mark as it related to your problem. We're you able to fix the problem and how did you do it? I've tried a boot disk and still can't get past the flashing color screens and I have tried using another monitor, but no luck. I think what caused for me was deleting a program that then corrupted my video driver files. Hope you can help. I now understand your frustration.
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post #8 of 13
5/10/12 at 12:36pm

I just fixed one of these myself..it involves taking it apart and popping out the graphics card and baking it in an oven @ 400 degrees for about 15 minutes to reflow the solder bga (ball grid array) and then putting it back together.  It fired right up afterwards, no problems at all, except for the plastic bezel for the dvi out I forgot to remove and melted it.  So make sure you remove that first.  You could use a heat gun too.  Just make sure you wrap it in foil and cut around the gpu chips to make sure they are heated to temperature.  Then make sure and update to the latest bios.  It runs noticeably cooler after the bios update.  Easy fix if you are will to disassemble it all.  Just keep track of all the screws, I taped all of them right by their screw holes as I took them out.  Hope this helps.

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post #9 of 13
5/11/12 at 11:23am

You are partially correct, yes this is a video problem and yes you can do a partial temporary repair in the oven, but your doubling the time limit. See "Baking you video card" for proper instructions.

But the truth is your video card will need repair or replacement. Why does the baking trick work? Because your reheating the solder on your card and assisting in a crude but useful re flowing or the solder to fix your connections. The reason you have a problem in the first place is because your laptop has over heated and literally melted the solder in your video card. 

 

Many of the dells seem to have this problem as do others, but at least dell is easy to get to the card and replace with minimal problems.

CLEAN the dust out of your notebooks, the dust looks like lint from a clothes dryer, it's nasty and blocks the cooling fins, causing your wonderful expensive toy to over heat.

 

Good Luck and keep your laptop clean and tidy..........

 

Al sneaky2.gif

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post #10 of 13
5/11/12 at 1:46pm

Correction, if done properly, it is a permanent fix.  My gpu temps are cool as a cucumber as well as my cpu temps.  I improved the cooling by implementing the "penny trick" where there was previously an inferior thermal pad in place, also used arctic silver 5 for the thermal paste.  You could actually see how the chip blackened before with the terrible pad.  I am confident this will never have an overheating problem again.

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post #11 of 13
5/11/12 at 2:42pm
I tend to walk the middle road on the baking winknudge.gif furthermore it requires a correction in attitude as how one uses a baked-gpu notebook, like pushing it to the limit might be ou of the question for future purpose. I have seen baked potatoes lasting a long time, with some requiring a re-bake now and then



cheers ...
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post #12 of 13
5/11/12 at 5:26pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by qhn View Post

I tend to walk the middle road on the baking winknudge.gif furthermore it requires a correction in attitude as how one uses a baked-gpu notebook, like pushing it to the limit might be ou of the question for future purpose. I have seen baked potatoes lasting a long time, with some requiring a re-bake now and then

cheers ...

???..okay, thanks for sharing

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post #13 of 13
5/11/12 at 5:38pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mng519 View Post

???..okay, thanks for sharing

I get what you're saying now, my bad.

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