Dell Inspiron 1501 display problem

donny-gal

Can anyone help with my laptop problem. Above machine just out of 3 year warranty, abroad, so they want telephone help out of warranty, which is bad enough in the UK but from Europe!!

From time to time when re-starting from Hibernating, my screen distorts, horizontal lines not lining up is the best I can describe it. Normally switching on and off restores it but today it is not playing at all, sometimes I use a LCD monitor, and others the laptop screen, won't work using either. Re-booted several times, after leaving for hours, and not, as I can see the red button to switch off, I can close down properly, not having to force a hard switch off.

Can manage to log in (luckily using safe mode with networking) and have mail and the web, so that is all I really need out here, obviously the screen resolution is less, so tried the boot with lower screen resolution, again distorted. Tried diagnostics, and came up with 2000-0146 intially, but the hdd appears to be working OK, but did manage to connect to my usb drive and back up what little I keep on here uniquely. Then got 4600-0009 Device_initialisation_failure SmBios structure 33 4E530141E.

I do have the disks so can repair the Vista Business if necessary.

Sorry for the missive, I also am wondering if the heat/humidly could affect it, though I do have a laptop cooler plate running.

Thanks DG

Hammyman

Those laptop cooler plates don't actually do anything other than partially mask the real problem which is a clogged up CPU fan/heatsink.

marcw79

Heat and humidity are a possible cause of graphics issues, though given that safe mode works, it would suggest a software issue / possibly even a hardware fault with the laptop. Having backed up your files, reinstalling Vista would provide you with a definitive answer as to where the problem lies - try booting into safe mode with networking, going into the device manager and rolling back the graphics card driver to a previous version or reinstalling the current drivers from the Dell website. Also ... please disable hibernation - it can cause major issues in and of itself - and may be the cause of your problems this time around. Hard Drive corruption in the appropriate place could also produce symptoms such as this by corrupting driver files so this is worth bearing in mind also ...

PS: Having not had sight of the issue, I am only stabbing wildly in the dark so dont shoot me if I am wrong :-)

donny-gal

Just Bumping to see if anyone else has had this problem? DG

donny-gal

After running all diagnostic programs I can find on here, this seems to be pointing to a hard disk error, how that works when it loads in safe mode, and the HDD seems to be working OK, I must admit is beyond me.

If I run the repair windows program, then is it likely to write to a different part of the disk, and overcome the problem? Or any other ideas?

DG

donny-gal

Went back to my roots, and opened the Command Prompt to run chkdsk. Found some errors, and want to run it with the /F command, however, as it is Windows with Command Prompt it won't let me.

Can anyone tell me how to run a chkdsk /F on here? Or what other windows option can I use?

DG