Got a Dell and a story...... 1

[brad1965]

Hello All:
I have a Dell L800r (winME) that has a serious problem. At boot-up the only display is some random verticle lines filling the right 30% of the screen. It has onboard video. What have I done so far?

I re-seated all cables and pc cards.
I re-seated memory.
I removed hard drive and installed it in my system. First as d drive, win2k had no problems with it.
As the d drive I scan-disked it. Nothing that couldn't be fixed.
I also virus and adware scanned it.
I installed it as my c drive. It would post and boot until the winMe splash screen, then it locked up. I am attributing this to a completely foreign hardware enviroment( or am I wrong?). This was some progress, I could see the display.

I am now thinking it is a on-board video issue. My instincts are a MoBo issue( hardware) as opposed to a driver issue. The display malfunctions at power-up, not at windows loading. Any other thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. Brad.

 

[edfair]

Since it is onboard your guess of M/B is probably good. But since it is onboard it is also sharing memory. It is being set up as VGA 640/480 during POST and if it fails there then the operating system is totally out of the picture.
It might be good to reset BIOS on the off chance something there is corrupted.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[brad1965]

Hello edfair
Thank you for confirming my diagnosis. I re-set the bios and no go, so I guess I get to tell the brother-in-law he needs a new puter. Thanks again.

 

[yada]

Disable the onBoard and try a pci card.