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I am trying to rescue/resuscitate a laptop that was dropped/smashed by my mom (long story). Its a Dell Inspiron 1764. I was hoping refurb it for my kids to get them started on the basics of programming.
I replaced the screen and the computer seems to boot fine to bios. There is a very occasional screen flicker. I replaced the HDD and loaded openSUSE Leap 42.1.
When I try to boot to SUSE linux, the screen gets to grub fine, but when starting to load the OS the screen goes black briefly (I believe when the video driver kicks in) and I start getting horizontal streaks and very frequent, nearly constant screen jitter. I've tried opensuse, mint and kunbuntu running from the HDD or a live-dvd with the same results.
When connected to an external monitor - the video is fine with no flickering on the external display while the LCD panel on the laptop is flickering away.
When I boot to knoppix (32-bit) from a liveDVD - the system seems well behaved with only an occasional screen flicker?
I've had it apart several times, checked the LCD cable connection to the new panel and to the MB. I thought I struck gold when I found the LCD cable ground screw was loose but tightening that had no effect. I also thought I was onto something when I found one of the RAM soDIMMs was not fully seated, but that too, had no effect. I also found and tightened several loose motherboard screws with no effect.
It feels like a HW problem, but I don't get why Knoppix so much better behaved than the 64bit flavors of linux I have tried.
At this point I'm not sure how to proceed to isolate the issue since I don't have another laptop to try the panel in. I'm pretty much at a point where I send the panel back and get another one, or try replacing the LCD cable or change out the motherboard. Since the display looks fine on an external monitor, I am thinking its probably not the MB.
Any thoughts from the calguns tech geeks? My next step is to run memtest overnight to see if that finds anything wrong with the RAM (and also see how that looks on the display)
Thanks,
drc
I replaced the screen and the computer seems to boot fine to bios. There is a very occasional screen flicker. I replaced the HDD and loaded openSUSE Leap 42.1.
When I try to boot to SUSE linux, the screen gets to grub fine, but when starting to load the OS the screen goes black briefly (I believe when the video driver kicks in) and I start getting horizontal streaks and very frequent, nearly constant screen jitter. I've tried opensuse, mint and kunbuntu running from the HDD or a live-dvd with the same results.
When connected to an external monitor - the video is fine with no flickering on the external display while the LCD panel on the laptop is flickering away.
When I boot to knoppix (32-bit) from a liveDVD - the system seems well behaved with only an occasional screen flicker?
I've had it apart several times, checked the LCD cable connection to the new panel and to the MB. I thought I struck gold when I found the LCD cable ground screw was loose but tightening that had no effect. I also thought I was onto something when I found one of the RAM soDIMMs was not fully seated, but that too, had no effect. I also found and tightened several loose motherboard screws with no effect.
It feels like a HW problem, but I don't get why Knoppix so much better behaved than the 64bit flavors of linux I have tried.
At this point I'm not sure how to proceed to isolate the issue since I don't have another laptop to try the panel in. I'm pretty much at a point where I send the panel back and get another one, or try replacing the LCD cable or change out the motherboard. Since the display looks fine on an external monitor, I am thinking its probably not the MB.
Any thoughts from the calguns tech geeks? My next step is to run memtest overnight to see if that finds anything wrong with the RAM (and also see how that looks on the display)
Thanks,
drc
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