Hi,
I'm having trouble diagnosing a display issue with an Inspiron 9400 laptop, a couple of pics are given below. Apologies for poor quality, they were captured by phone.
Symptoms are:
- Corrupted characters at the POST screen and thereafter while booting Windows.
- Windows XP will seemingly boot, and continuing hard drive activity leads me to think reasonably successfully, however following the "Loading Windows" screen the display goes completely dark - not just black, but as if there is zero signal to the screen.
- Safe Mode will boot successfully (in 800x600 res).
- Multicoloured corrupted pixels in Safe Mode.
Diagnosis so far:
- Memtest86+ (bootable CD) runs without any errors.
- Prime95 v25.9 'Blend' mode runs without any errors.
- FurMark won't run in Safe Mode.
- Replacement GFX card fitted: same issues (see post #4 for details).
- Display outputted to full size monitor. Graphical issues remain exactly the same (post #7).
Suggestions please to the cause of the problem and/or further tests to try.
Thanks!
F8 boot options screen
Windows XP Safe Mode @ 800x600
I'm having trouble diagnosing a display issue with an Inspiron 9400 laptop, a couple of pics are given below. Apologies for poor quality, they were captured by phone.
Symptoms are:
- Corrupted characters at the POST screen and thereafter while booting Windows.
- Windows XP will seemingly boot, and continuing hard drive activity leads me to think reasonably successfully, however following the "Loading Windows" screen the display goes completely dark - not just black, but as if there is zero signal to the screen.
- Safe Mode will boot successfully (in 800x600 res).
- Multicoloured corrupted pixels in Safe Mode.
Diagnosis so far:
- Memtest86+ (bootable CD) runs without any errors.
- Prime95 v25.9 'Blend' mode runs without any errors.
- FurMark won't run in Safe Mode.
- Replacement GFX card fitted: same issues (see post #4 for details).
- Display outputted to full size monitor. Graphical issues remain exactly the same (post #7).
Suggestions please to the cause of the problem and/or further tests to try.
Thanks!
F8 boot options screen

Windows XP Safe Mode @ 800x600

Last edited: