Smashed screen replaced, now its grey! :S

[bouncer5]

I bought thisDell Latitude D820, it was working but had an annoying crack, I wiped the drive, and set about putting in a new screen.

 

I put in the new screen to be greeted with this.

 

CANNOT POST IMAGE.

 

Now today I bought another screen, and I have the same issue, I have replace the screen cable with another cable, but this is used.

 

I've already invested quite a but on money into the laptop, and would LOVE to get it fixed.

[MatthewL]

Does it work if you plug a monitor into it?

[bouncer5]

Yup I hooked it up to an external monitor, hit the button for it, and installed windows vista, Now the WIERD thing is, If I start it up now not hooked up, The laptop starts up with the grey scree, and as soon as windows kicks in, the screen goes normal and I can use it as is!!

What the hell is going on there?

[MatthewL]

What chipset is the video do you know?

 

Have you run the diagnostics to check it all tests ok?

[bouncer5]

I cannot seem to get into the bios on the external screen, Of course it doenst help I have no clue what the bios button is on this dell.

[MatthewL]

Bios is F2

[bouncer5]

Well if I bash F2, I have NO idea if it worked, because then hitting Fn +F8 I can't see anything on wither screen.

 

The only reason I got anywhere the first time was because I changed the ram out, and when I went to external it told me that, and then gave me the option to boot from DVD.

[mac_shinobi]

Check the service tag on dells warranty to see if its still in warranty ?

[bouncer5]

The warrenty expired over 3 years ago...

[Chris-W-]

Are you able to boot from the disk drive? You could try running a bootable diagnostic CD if you can. e.g. Hirens BootCD

[bouncer5]

After a few talks with some people, we have decided although unusual the bios is outputting at 1650 x 1050? but the new monitor replacement only supports 1280 x 800.

[synaesthesia]

The 820's have a fair range of different cards, from the most basic intel's up to 8800 level Quadros. I had an 820 with a 1920x1200 panel and indeed the BIOS and POST ran at native resolution for the card. A bios update will fix this "feature" for you however doing it blind isn't recommended.

Really you need to get a like-for-like replacement of the panel.

[bouncer5]

This is running a nVidea Quadro 110M.

 

Getting a hold of a 15.4" screen was difficult in the first place, all the shops I spoke to wanted stupid amounts of money, due to a lack of 15.4" screens being made, For the most part, it is 15.6" and up currently.