1720 display won't turn on - please help

Hello

I've posted this in the OFFICIAL: Inspiron 1720 Owner's Thread but i didn't get any attention so i thought it would be a better idea to start this as a new thread, because i believe the subject hasn't been touched before on this forum.

I have had my Inspiron 1720 for 3 weeks now (although i didn't even use it during the first one). It came with FreeDOS (and 2 blank unformatted 120gb hard drives) so i installed XP using instructions i found here on this website.

The only thing that looked suspicious was installing the video drivers using a modified INF from laptopvideo2go.com but i actually used the original driver installer from nvidia and just changed the INF, so i thought it would be ok.

A couple of days later i use hibernation, and when i turn on my computer, i notice that the display doesn't turn on at all! Not even during the Bios load screen when you see the white progress bar! Howevere, the LCD backlighting had turned on.

I turned it off using the power button, and when i restarted, the screen was working again, so i didn't pay that much attention to the incident.

One week later i use hibernation again and only 6 hours later, when i want to turn on my laptop, the display problem reappeared! I used the button again to turn it off, except that it didn't solve the problem not even several restarts.

I took it to work and plugged it in to an external display, but it didn't work. Only after a couple more restarts the monitor started working, and at the next restart the laptop display turned on and was working like nothing had ever happened.

I wanted to make sure it was working so i unplugged the display, turend off the laptop a few times and it was working fine, so i turned it off one more time in order to take it home. Of course, when i got home the display wasn't working again, to my despair, so i looked it up on the web and found this thread on the laptopvideo2go forums.

The differences are that i am using XP not Vista, and that the problem persists even if the computer was shut down properly, not using hibernate or stand by.

I managed to turn on the laptop display again, by using my CRT monitor at home, formatted the system partition, loaded the defaults in the Bios, and reinstalled XP, but the problem was still there a couple of hours later when i turned on the computer in the morning.

I really don't know what to do, i don't even know if the hibernation was a coincidence and my display isn't working simply because it's defective, or if the drivers and the enhanced INF did something to my video card. I don't know how to undo everything, because reinstalling windows clearly did not solve the problem, so i decided to turn it in into service and hopefully they'll fix it.

What do you think is the problem? Have you ever heard of this kind of problem?

Please forgive me for writing such a long post but it seems to be a very complex issue and i really need help because i won't have anything else to work on in a couple of days.

Please help or simply post your opinions on this matter. Thank you.

 

the 1720 is a pretty new laptop so im sure it will be covered by the warranty, and luckily iv had the good end of dell service issues such as laptop replacement, wireless problems etc. So HOPEFULLY everything should be covered and you will get it fixed or a replacement. Im not really deep tech expert but perhaps some kind of connection is loose with the display, i really dont know.
Hope everything goes well! you probably paid alot of money.
matt

 

hey

thanks for being optimistic but here in romania there is no real dell service center, just authorized service providers... anyway, i turned it in today, the lady at the desk was even less than an amateur and, while i explained the problem to her thoroughly, she just wrote down five words which may as well describe any other computer malfunction... and she used the word monitor, which isn't even present in a laptop, to describe the lcd display :|

oh well, hopefully i'll have it back in a month, but please post your opinions about this problem i'm having...

could it really be just a loose cable from the computer to the display ?

 

I suggest that you use the video drivers from the Dell website. I'm not really sure as for the Dell website in Romania, but in the US, there should be dedicated video drivers for vista and xp. Try uninstalling the video drivers that you installed, and replace it with the one from the Dell website.

 

i did that's the first thing i did. then i also used the original dell drivers when i installed the clean xp. and the problem was still there...

that's why i'm wondering if a driver could possibly write something in the video card's bios or in some memory that it has - and make it forget which display to output the signal to...

if that's so then maybe there's a way to reset the video bios, like you reset your desktop's bios by using a switch...

guess all i can do now is wait for the diagnostics from the service providers and hope it's not that big of a problem that will keep my laptop in service for a month :|