Hi,
I have a dell xps m170 laptop running windows media center. Recently the screen froze and small lines appeared and the pc crashed. I restarted and ir worked ok , but the same problem ocurred again.
After this I tried to restart my laptop but I could't even recieve the dell bios screen, and the num lock led is on. Every time I try to turn it ot I get a blank screen.

Everything happened suddendly I didn't installed anything or updated anything.
I tried connecting my laptop to a monitor, it shows information but it is all wrong, the screen shows small lines and random characters, it begins lo load windows, but it goes blank after a while.
Perhaps it could be the video card.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Juan Manuel

PS: I already tried changing the coin cell battery, the battery and the RAM but nothing.

Being a laptop, there's not much YOU can do to repair it. When they go, they go and yours appears to have gone.

I know it's not what you want to hear but what you've described is the end for your laptop. The disk data can be rescued by attaching it in an enclosure via USB to the new machine.

Or you can send it off to Dell for repair.

Best of luck.

I don´t think my laptop died because I can enter windows in safe mode, but in a separate monitor. In the monitor the are several lines all around the screen , they let me read whats behind but its very difficult. I think it could be a video card issue because everything else works fine.

yes, I understand. But how do you change a video card in a laptop? It would have to go back to Dell and the repair costs money. I appreciate it might be cheaper than a new laptop, but if you can stretch to a replacement laptop (they're so cheap now), you won't have to wait a few weeks for the repair.

That sort of thing and these are your decisions.

Hey I think i may have just encountered the same/very similar problem as you.
I haven't been able to have a good poke about yet, this happened this morning : (
But to give you a little more possitive news, you CAN buy a replacement graphics card - the Geforce Go 7800 GTX and Geforce Go 6800 Ultra will work in the XPS M170 (so if you had the 6800- good time to upgrade otherwise replace), i've had a look on ebay and there is 1 guy still selling these.

Don't despair!

Many Dell XPS M1210s have failed due to faulty NVidia GPUs. This is a known issue, and Dell will under some circumstances replace motherboards for free - even if your warranty has expired. I know, because the GPU in my wife's XPS M1210 failed outside warranty, and after troubleshooting the problem Dell replaced it free of charge.

See my blog post NVidia GPU bug with Dell XPS M1210 for details including the email I sent to Dell regarding the issue. Feel free to use that email as a template.