dell inspiron 1521 (amd / ati) vista. the monitor is now pink and green and kind of swirly animated. one of my friends comps had a suggested ati driver update and he did it and had to revert 'cause the suggested driver wouldn't go to the res he had before.
i downloaded and installed the driver for the chip (ati x1270 (or 1210, i forget (comp is not with me at the moment))) with no luck.

any suggestions?
please and thanks.

Dude, you got a dell!

That sounds like it just needs degaussed.

Is it a crt?

Are you sure the monitor isn't messed up physically or your graphic card isn't dying?

does it do it while it's booting as well? if so it's not a driver issue.

i'm betting the cable between the display and the body has gone bad. the cable flexes a lot, with the screen opening and closing, so it's pretty common for them to go bad

that's actually pretty funny!

laptop. it does do it when it's booting up. :/ warranty ran out a few months ago. maybe i'll open it up and see what i can see.
i thought if it's not a driver issue it might be overheating.

No warranty now? Looks like you're screwed.

see if flexing the screen back and forth helps any. if not it could be the gpu, in which case you're boned. it's part of the mainboard

If he has a dedicated GPU, it can be replaced.

1521 doesnt

Doesn't matter. The cost of replacing components in a laptop is usually so great that it's not worth it.

If you actually can figure out exactly what is wrong, you'll probably find that the replacement part is amazingly expensive relative the price of the whole thing. (Recall that the battery in a $1000 laptop costs $100 by itself) Sometimes you can get parts cheaper by buying the same model laptop on Ebay that is broken in a different way.

This actually works for an old Dell Inspiron laptop I had which had screen problems. Although, I assume the quality of screens for that particular line must have increased since 7 years ago...no?



I had a Mac iBook laptop which had burned out its mainboard a year ago. Apple put the cost of that mainboard, today, for the outdated iBook line around $550. Screw that.

I don't understand it. iBook is no longer being sold yet the parts cost so damn much?

Oh my god, please reread this sentence:

"iBook is no longer being sold yet the parts cost so damn much?"

If you bought every piece of a laptop separate, it would total four or five times the cost of the laptop.

display cable is pretty cheap. as in <$50 usually

I recall it having a dedicated option, he said it was ATI.

opening and closing it a few times seems to have fixed it for the moment. thanks.

it's an onboard ati with shared memory.

Hahahaha, sucks for you.

I have a Inspiron 1521 but I went with the nVidia card. no problems here