Is my Laptop Screen going out?

[ChristianKitsune]

A couple of weeks ago, i noticed what looked like "Braille" dots all over my screen... They only lasted about an hour and then went away, with the occasional occurrence, lasting only a few minutes...

but Last night they returned and have pretty much stayed... they look like the attached image of a blank web page... I took this picture with my cell phone because I am not sure a screencap would capture what I'm talking about...

They only are around when there is a lot of white, they really don't show up much when there are other colors around...

I use this laptop a great deal, it's pretty much what I do my work on... so I would say it's on a good 10 hours a day... and I've had it for a year and a half...

If it is my LCD screen going out, how long do I really have? I NEED my computer for my job... and I don't really have the funds to get it fixed... :/ But I can try to get the money...what should I do? Do i require a brand new computer now?

I have a Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop. purchased in February of last year....
I can deal with the dottiness... just...not reformatting the thing and losing stuff... >_<


Thanks for any info you guys can give me


EDIT: Annnnd the dots are suddenly gone???? So I guess it's a come and go type thing? But still it's weeiiirdd...

[Midori]

That does sound like hardware failure to me, especially since it's intermittent. I've seen other visual problems like that in LCDs, though not that specifically. If that's the case reformatting your hard drive will not fix it. When they appeared/disappeared was it suddenly, or during a reboot?

[ChristianKitsune]

That does sound like hardware failure to me, especially since it's intermittent. I've seen other visual problems like that in LCDs, though not that specifically. If that's the case reformatting your hard drive will not fix it. When they appeared/disappeared was it suddenly, or during a reboot?

Ack, I meant to type LCD...XD
It was pretty suddenly, and rebooting doesn't even always fix the problem...

[ChristianKitsune]

I also hooked up my laptop to my desktop monitor and I also get the dots there as well....so its obviously not my LCD XD..

[Midori]

Oh that's strange. In that case I'd assume it's a graphics driver or graphics card issue. I don't know enough about this stuff to help much I'm afraid.

It could still be hardware (in the GPU rather than the screen), in which case there's not much you can do. Or it could be a bad driver, in which case if you can figure out how to reinstall the graphics driver (I can't give instructions) that might change something.

[mechana2015]

It looks somewhat similar to when the capacitors went out on my GPU.

[Shao Feng-Li]

Oi, and GPUs are soldered in the motherboard. Huh, in that photo, why aren't the dots on the green menu area on the browser? I would try out a reformatting before forking out money for repairs. Just back up data first. Or try a system restore to before this started.

[Mithrandir]

I also hooked up my laptop to my desktop monitor and I also get the dots there as well....so its obviously not my LCD XD..

That looks like a useful piece of troubleshooting! However, I was afraid that might be the case. Your new list of potential issues looks like:

* GPU (graphics card)
* MoBo (Motherboard)
* Video Driver

If I had to put money on one of those, I'd guess Video Driver because hard disk corruption is pretty common on laptops. Since it sometimes goes away, it sounds like a sector that *alllllmost* going bad (it can be read sometimes). Do you know anyone with a copy of SpinRite 6? I've seen that clear up some really bizarre driver issues by running it on level 4.

- Mith

[Mithrandir]

It looks somewhat similar to when the capacitors went out on my GPU.

When this happened, was it a constant issue, or did it only do it sometimes?

[Valkaiser]

I too have experienced display corruption visually identical to this when testing questionable video boards. If the excellent advice already given in this thread does not fix your problem, I would posit that the laptop's age, usage level, and the intermittent appearance of this issue may point to a heat-stressed GPU. Laptops necessarily have minimal cooling systems that tend to become clogged with dust over time. A quick fix would be to acquire a bottle of canned air and attempt to blow out the dust through the vents. A more thorough job requires the laptop to be somewhat disassembled.
This also reduces heat buildup on the CPU, which can minimize other stability problems.