The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Alienware 14 Screen Issue

    Discussion in 'Alienware 14 and M14x' started by Nathel, Dec 1, 2014.

  1. Nathel

    Nathel Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    7
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    So, I was merrily playing Dragon Age: Inquisition on my Alienware 14, and suddenly the screen blacked out for a moment and then it came back like this:

    WP_20141127_19_56_47_Pro.jpg

    Now it's been a few days, and this is still an issue. Sometimes the flickering appears when I start the computer, sometimes when I unplug it from the desktop monitor (I use the laptop display as the secondary one if this is somehow relevant), and the only way to solve it is to hold the power button until it switches off - the computer won't turn off entirely if you simply shut down from desktop. The display will also turn black or start to flicker after you enter the password when logging in if I don't have the other monitor plugged in.

    Now something is obviously wrong, but I'm far too inexperienced with computers to know what or how to solve it. Anyone have any ideas? :)

    Still have about 3 years of warranty left, so that's not a problem.
     
  2. xvipx

    xvipx Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    10
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    If you still have the warranty, i would suggest you don't do anything yourself, when you've time go ahead and give your notebook back to Dell and let them inspect the issue, i don't know what are the cause exactly but i think it might be either the GPU is connecting/disconnecting same time or something wrong with the display itself
     
  3. Snakeshadeus

    Snakeshadeus Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    78
    Messages:
    31
    Likes Received:
    4
    Trophy Points:
    16
    Last edited: Dec 1, 2014
  4. Nathel

    Nathel Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    7
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Yeah, I installed the newest drivers. Will try the older ones out. If it doesn't work I'll simply call support and ask them to fix it.

    Thanks for the help!
     
  5. Snakeshadeus

    Snakeshadeus Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    78
    Messages:
    31
    Likes Received:
    4
    Trophy Points:
    16
  6. rtnlsltn

    rtnlsltn Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    2
    Messages:
    119
    Likes Received:
    19
    Trophy Points:
    31
    Could be a bad cable as well, it's a fairly frequent thing to go in laptops. However, it sounds like a software/driver issue from what you described.