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Dell 2005fpw weirdness... HELP!

A

Ahriman4891

Gawd
Joined
Jun 18, 2005
Messages
534
Hey guys,

Long story short, I got the 2005fpw recently with all the discounts going on. It arrived yesterday, I got it, but did not have too much time to examine it. The only thing I noticed last night were 3 dead light gray/white pixels. That did not bother me at all: they were in the most peculiar configuration, literally

: .

with 1 healhty pixel between the 2 white ones horizontally and vertically, so they just looked like a dust particle. They were only noticeable on dark backgrounds, and were located at the very right of the screen, where the vertical scrollbar usually is. So I was as happy as you can be with 3 dead pixels, since I would literally never be able to see them.

Today, however, I noticed a more prominent problem: horizontal lines running down across the whole screen. They are just slightly darker than the background color, and move at about 1 inch/second. I would not have noticed them if my wallpaper did not have a large area of uniform color.

Now, I decided to do some testing, trying to figure out whether it was the monitor's, cable's, or my video card's fault. I have an XFX GeForce 6600GT with dual DVI. The monitor was connected with the DVI cable that came with it. My secondary display, my trusty old 15" NEC 1550V LCD, never had the problem, but it was running through VGA (with the DVI-VGA dongle that came with the card). It did not have the problem when I was running dual displays today, either.

So, first I switched the video card outputs. No effect.

Then, I connected the 2005fpw via VGA in a single-display configuration. VGA produced no artifacts.

Then, I connected the 2005 through both the VGA and the DVI. Here, the weirdness started:
1) start with VGA: clean
2) Switch to DVI: clean (!!??)

3) Then I switch to VGA again: clean.
4) Then I switch to DVI yet again: artifacts.

The above cycle would get replicated no matter how times I switch between the inputs (???????). E.g. if on step 5 I go to VGA, and on step 6 I go to DVI, DVI will be clean again. Basically: VGA is always clean, DVI has artifacts every other time I switch from VGA to DVI.

By the way, when the 2005 is connected via DVI only, switching to VGA (which is blank) and back has no effect whatsoever--the artifacts are still there.

What's going on? Anyone experienced that? Any suggestions? It looks to me like the monitor's BIOS is confused... I really did not care about the 3 dead pixels, but now it looks like I will have to ask for a replacement, if I don't figure it out in the next couple of days.

P.S.
No, I am not hallucinating, I had my roommate come in and look at it with me. He even noticed the moving lines withoug me telling him what the problem was, they are pretty obvious.
 
Yes, it looks like that's my only choice.

Can I ask for a replacement online? (i.e. chat?) Or do I have to call, wait for an hour, and speak to someone in India?

Also, if I am not mistaken, the replacement process is as follows: they send me a replacement + a sticker to ship the original back to them free, right? Or do I have to ship the original first?

Thanks for the help, everyone, I appreciate it.
 
well, I gave them a call.

The tech support lady tried to walk me through some primitive troubleshooting steps, took me a while to convince her that I did all that already :) They are sending me a new monitor, which should arrive in 2-3 business days.

*Really, really hoping the 2nd one will be trouble-free*

Thank you for your input, guys :)
 
Well, I got the replacement 2005fpw today. Same problem. I did not even do the extensive testing this time. It seems to be just the combination of the monitor and the video card :( The sucky thing is that I really like this monitor. I think that the S-IPS panel is a lot better than the S-PVA used by 2405, and a 20" for $400 >>> a 24" for $800, at least for me.

My second monitor has no dead pixels, and seems to have better backlight. So I am sending the first one back, keeping the 2nd one. Maybe I'll just run it through VGA... Also, even though I suspect it's placebo effect :( it seems that the running lines on the 1st one are a bit more pronounced.

One final question: Am I supposed to pay for shipping back the 1st one? I did pay ~$20 when I returned the 2405, but that wasn't defective. I recall something about dell sending people stickers to put on the box, but I got nothing of that sort.
 
I have the lines on the left side of my monitor in DVI mode. I have a flawless backlight and no dead pixels. The lines are a common problem. I decided to keep mine and found a work around for the lines. You can use PowerStrip or if you have nvidia card "Advanced Timing" to fix the lines. Though I recomend powerstrip. Basically open a color, web page etc, where the lines are easy to see, and then use powerstrips custom timings panel and adjust the pixel clock upwards one increment at a time until the lines go away, then use powerstrips frequency lock to make sure no other program changes (including drivers) the refresh rate.. This works like a charm. My only concern is that in the future I may lose the ability to adjust this with differnt graphics cards.

Regards,
Mike
 
Elderblaze, I greatly appreciate your advice! As a matter of fact, I just downloaded the latest forceware to mess with the advanced timings :) (For some reason, there was no option in my previous drivers, even though I knew it should be there). However, I'll give powerstrip a try first, since your experience with it was better.

Speaking of timings, I just messed up xorg config last night, playing with the 1680x1050 res. in Mandrake Linux :D Now the X server doesn't load, and that's a perfect excuse to get rid of Mandrake and finally install Debian :) sorry for OT rant, just trying to focus on brighter things in life :D
 
I just got my new 2005FPW yesterday. I checked for dead pixels and found two....not a big deal I guess. I'm using the DVI input.
Then as I was reading this post I noticed the horizontal bars moving down the screen on the left edge....thanks a lot!! ;)
I have a 6800 GT and I played around with the advanced timing settings. I changed the "vertical lines -> front porch" value from 3 to 6 and the moving lines went away.
Thanks for the fix.
 
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