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jlacroix

Member

Registered: 2009-08-16

Posts: 576

Strange Laptop Screen Problem, Sometimes Boots to Garbled Screen

My laptop is a Dell Latitude E6410 with integrated Intel graphics, and a WXHA+ panel. I'm using 64bit Arch.

I really don't know how to explain this problem so I took a picture of it with my camera. Every now and then (about one in every five boots) my laptop will get a garbled up screen when X starts, and there is no way out of it. The colors appear to be random and get brighter and brighter until the panel is completely white. It happens as soon as X starts, and NOTHING is readable when this happens. I can switch to a tty and reboot the machine, but the tty is garbled too, I just enter the reboot commands from memory without seeing the screen.

Here is a picture of the machine when this is happening:
http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/7146 … 215359.jpg

It seems like it happens more often now with 2.6.37, but I don't know what triggers it. I filed a bug report against it but maybe I shouldn't have, perhaps I have something set up wrong? I don't even know where to begin when troubleshooting this type of problem, I've never seen anything like this before.

I'm hoping maybe one of you may have experienced this and can shed some light?

Last edited by jlacroix (2011-02-02 03:13:08)

stqn

Member

Registered: 2010-03-19

Posts: 1,191

Website

Re: Strange Laptop Screen Problem, Sometimes Boots to Garbled Screen

I've had what you describe (the screen fills quite strangely and becomes more and more white like fog) on my previous laptop. I think it's likely that you GPU or its RAM is dying (from overheating?)

If your laptop is a few years old, you might want to try and change the thermal paste. Good luck with that though.

Edit: my laptop still works in runlevel 3 (TTY), but crashes when I run Firefox under X. This makes me think the VRAM is the culprit, but maybe I'm wrong.

Last edited by stqn (2011-02-02 04:39:29)

jlacroix

Member

Registered: 2009-08-16

Posts: 576

Re: Strange Laptop Screen Problem, Sometimes Boots to Garbled Screen

I've had what you describe (the screen fills quite strangely and becomes more and more white like fog) on my previous laptop. I think it's likely that you GPU or its RAM is dying (from overheating?)

If your laptop is a few years old, you might want to try and change the thermal paste. Good luck with that though.

Edit: my laptop still works in runlevel 3 (TTY), but crashes when I run Firefox under X. This makes me think the VRAM is the culprit, but maybe I'm wrong.

The laptop is brand new, and still under warranty. I don't think it's a hardware problem, because everything is fine until X loads. When this problem occurs, it happens at the exact same spot every time. If it doesn't happen during boot, it will never happen unless I reboot it again. i could be wrong but I don't think the symptoms fit there being a defect.

Then again, I could be wrong. If it is a hardware defect, I'd have to figure out how to reproduce the problem in Windows (I have a Windows HDD set aside in my closet in case I need to call Dell). I only use that hard drive for Dell support so I don't have to hear their BS about using Linux. On my Windows HDD, I've never seen this problem.

stqn

Member

Registered: 2010-03-19

Posts: 1,191

Website

Re: Strange Laptop Screen Problem, Sometimes Boots to Garbled Screen

In my case Windows crashes during boot, so I have no doubt it's a hardware problem . In your case I can't be sure, but if what happens is really similar to what I've seen, it doesn't look like anything that could be achieved by software to me.

jlacroix

Member

Registered: 2009-08-16

Posts: 576

Re: Strange Laptop Screen Problem, Sometimes Boots to Garbled Screen

In my case Windows crashes during boot, so I have no doubt it's a hardware problem . In your case I can't be sure, but if what happens is really similar to what I've seen, it doesn't look like anything that could be achieved by software to me.

If it's hardware, can you think if a way I can reproduce it? I can easily have Dell come over and replace whatever is wrong if it's hardware, and I can pinpoint it.