XP/Dell laptop display problem

December 29, 2004 9:23 AM

XP/Dell Lapop Question: Why do white fields display a sickly blue on my screen? [+]

Friends, my Dell 600m has been acting up for 2 months--it doesn’t recognize my settings at startup--but just last week it developed a really annoying habit. All of the fields that are supposed to display as white instead are a sickly pale blue. If I squint real hard, it looks like a one-pixel by one-pixel blue and white checkerboard. I have messed around in the display settings but can’t seem to fix it. The laptop is from my university and my IT wizards have the XP disks, so I can’t reinstall the OS. I tried Googling search strings like “XP display problem blue white checkerboard” but no luck. Any ideas?

posted by LarryC to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Have you installed the new "MSN Search Toolbar" recently? It's got a "Form Fill" option that's supposed to help auto-fill name, address and ID/PW fields on forms, and it makes those fields blue when it recognizes them. (If you have installed it, you can turn that feature off in the "Options" dialog.)
posted by LairBob at 9:38 AM on December 29, 2004

Response by poster: No on the MSN toolbar, but I do have the Google toolbar. Turning it off does not seem to do anything.
posted by LarryC at 9:55 AM on December 29, 2004

Best answer: You could try using system restore and go back more than 2 months to see if this fixes your problem. Start->Programs->accessories->Systems Tools->System Restore. You could also play around with MSCONFIG and unselect/select what you want to start when you Machine boots. Start->Run-> type "msconfig" and then press enter.
I'd also recommended poking around the Dell message boards, someone may be able to assist you there.
Dell Support Boards
posted by white_devil at 10:18 AM on December 29, 2004

Oops, I meant recommend.
posted by white_devil at 10:19 AM on December 29, 2004

Does it show up if you take a screenshot and view that on some other machine? If so. that would eliminate the display hardware itself and leave you with mere software to fix.
posted by majick at 10:54 AM on December 29, 2004

Response by poster: Majick--clever! No, the effect does not show up in a screenshot displayed on another machine. White_Devil, thanks, the laptop will not allow me to do a system restore, on restarting I get a vague error message that a system restore could not be completed for the date I have chosen (and I tried five). I am still exploring the Dell Community Forums.
posted by LarryC at 11:18 AM on December 29, 2004

Best answer: "Majick--clever! No, the effect does not show up in a screenshot displayed on another machine."

Your hardware is broken. System Restore will fix nothing.

It's probably the LCD controller starting to fail (I'm not surprised -- I've been through many Dell laptops and this is a common failure)

If the machine is in warranty, you'll be wanting Dell to fix it. If it's out of warranty, you're pretty much screwed. The part is expensive and kind of a pain to replace.
posted by majick at 4:29 PM on December 29, 2004

Response by poster: Majick: Thanks. The laptop is both under warranty and the technical property of my employer, so the bad news is pretty bearable. I'll bring it over to the tech guys next week when they get back from break.
posted by LarryC at 5:10 PM on December 29, 2004

LarryC - dell won't take it back unless it fails one of their tests. do yourself a favor, run the full dell diagnostic scan on it, and save the output to a text file for them to peruse. it will hopefully make the exchange easier as they'll already have proof the system is crapping out to give to dell when they call it in for service.

might need to download the diagnostics from dell and make a boot disk; usually you can just run from one of the supplied disks but i take it from your comments that you don't have access to those.

of course if your tech guys will do this for you, by all means let them do it.
posted by caution live frogs at 6:27 AM on December 30, 2004