Pinstripe screen of death

[Lucky3623]

Originally Posted by pauldun170

Another thing to do is measure temps and voltages.

I don't think he would get anomalies on the screen from memory. that tends to point to voltage issues (possibly related to heat related degredation) at the vid processor or in some of the interconnectomobobbies on the system bus.

I had a very similar issue... it ended up being 1 bad memory module. I thought the same thing... started with LCD, power supply... memory was next to last on my list...

download cpuz for temps...

[Papa_Complex]

Originally Posted by fatbuckRTO

Says nothing, just gives me a pinstripe screen. XP.

That's too bad. If it was giving a driver error and it was Vista, then it would be a well known issue. With XP and no error, it's more likely a hardware issue.
Just in case though, you could uninstall the current ATI software and install the newest compatible version of Catalyst from the ATI/AMD website.

Other than that it could be video card (might be a separate board under the keyboard area if this was an upgrade to the standard build), main board, memory, or LCD/cabling.

The easiest thing to check is the LCD/cabling. If the pinstriping goes away if you move the display on the hinges, then it's either a bad cable or the video card needs to be reseated. On some models the video card works loose and you just need to remove the keyboard, then push down on the video sub-board. Otherwise either the video card or cabling needs to be replaced.

If it's shared video memory and you have more than one memory module, try removing them one at a time to see if the problem goes away.

Unfortunately though, my experience has generally been that such issues are caused by a failing main board in notebooks.

Originally Posted by pauldun170

Another thing to do is measure temps and voltages.

I don't think he would get anomalies on the screen from memory. that tends to point to voltage issues (possibly related to heat related degredation) at the vid processor or in some of the interconnectomobobbies on the system bus.

Dell has some of the best thought out cooling in the business but, if the fan isn't spinning, it could potentially be an overheat. That fart dust is murder.