Hi, I'm trying to repair a friends Inspiron M501R laptop and I'm not sure where to start. It is out of warranty and running on Windows 7.
This is what I know about the problems:
- Throughout the BIOS and boot process the screen is mostly unreadable due to being covered in graphical artefacts.
- I haven't seen a cracked LCD screen in person, but from the images I've seen I'm pretty sure it isn't cracked in this case.
- The laptop will start to boot windows and then bluescreen, but due to the screen being illegible I cannot see what the error is.
- The laptop will boot into safe mode, but is still pretty much unusable.
The artefacts being present in the BIOS make me think that it's a hardware issue and not a driver issue, and I'm thinking the LCD cable is probably broken or has come loose. But that still doesn't explain why it cannot boot Windows, so I'm assuming it's a separate issue for now.
Before I open it up to have a look at the screen cable, I'd like to ask if anyone knows if this is a common issue? or can anybody think of something I haven't considered?