Gary Eckstein

I loved my Dell M1330 notebook until my laptop became another Dell product inflicted with NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS display adapter problems …

After having owned my M1330 for just over a year, it started to behave erratically with the symptoms including; getting very hot, shutting down unexpectedly, ‘freezing’ and the screen suddenly showing multicoloured lines. My laptop was out of warranty and I did significant investigation as to what may be the problem (and resolution). After a lot of Googling and searching the Dell support Website (and I mean many hours searching for a resolution) I came across a blog post by Dell explaining that they are aware of the errors with NVIDIA GPUs and they and are providing a Limited Warranty Enhancement for the following Dell products; XPS M1530, XPS M1330, Vostro Notebook 1710, Vostro Notebook 1510, Vostro Notebook 1400, Vostro Notebook 1310, Latitude D830, Latitude D820, Latitude D630c, Latitude D630, Dell Precision M2300, Dell Precision M4300, Dell Precision M65, Inspiron 1420, Latitude D620. As described by Dell ‘the limited warranty enhancement is specific to this issue and will extend coverage by 12 months from the date the original warranty term for the laptop expires. For example, one-year warranties will be extended to 24 months for this issue only. The maximum combined period for the initial warranty and the limited-warranty enhancement is 60 months. Systems purchased with 60-month warranties will not be extended. Customers whose warranties have expired will be eligible for this limited warranty enhancement from the date the initial warranty expired’.

I contacted Dell support and they sent out a technician who replaced the relevant parts and my M1330 was up and running perfectly until …

Well, I woke up this morning and was welcomed with a black and white screen. After a bit of Googling I have discovered that there are many more people afflicted by this NVIDIA GeForce with Vista problem. My solution to this no color screen problem was to roll-back the display adapter driver which appears to have done the trick (i.e. I have a color screen again). This is all a bit baffling as the display driver hadn’t been updated for a few weeks so I have no idea why the screen was suddenly black and white.

I was a firm Dell proponent until the NVIDIA GeForce problems (note that prior to the display problems my XPS M1330 hard drive required replacement). I can understand that should Dell contact all owners of affected products to advise them of the potential problems they will have a stream of support requests that have nothing to do with the faulty NVIDIA issue which will be costly and onerous for Dell. As a consumer however I believe that Dell has not been altogether forthright with providing information about the NVIDIA GeForce being erratic. Even if Dell provides information about the known error on its support pages that would be a start. Dell is aware of a wide spread issue and should make information easily and readily available for consumers.

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