Problem with horizontal lines across screen on boot

f14tomcat said:

Members.

If possible, please avoid red font in your posts and replies. It is quite difficult to read and hard on the eyes. Thanks.

Sorry, I was trying to make my answers stand out against the different points. Having defective colour vision I know only too well that some colours jar. Red is okay for me, didn't realise it wouldn't be for others

dekayd said:

Saggy, on the dell website it says that model came with either an Intel or Radeon graphics card. You definitely need to check which graphics card you have. Apparently you tried to download a driver which wasn't compatible for your laptop.
Go to the search box and type in Device Manager. Look for Display Adapters and click on the arrow. It will list which one is installed.

If it says Intel HD Graphics 4000 go here:
https://www.dell.com/support/home/en...spiron-15-3521

if it is an AMD Radeon HD Graphics Driver go here:
https://www.dell.com/support/home/en...spiron-15-3521

Let us know which on board graphics you have.

Definitely got the Intel HD 4000.

And also the latest driver, according to your link, which was issued in 2015.

Will move onto the next suggestion tomorrow, when we can again check what happens on boot up. Thanks for your help so far.

SaggyMaggyPoo said:

The lines ... always disappear before the login screen appears.

If that is correct then you can ignore any driver [in fact, any Windows factor at all] as being the cause.

I have had Dell laptop displays that have had lines across them but they have always persisted in Windows as well.

Is your Bios up to date? Go to Dell support, enter your Dell Service tag and check. Here's an example -

Check that the SortBy is set to newest first.
- Look down through the list until you find the first Bios entry. You can check its details by clicking on the down arrow on the right-hand side of the entry.
- You can check your existing Bios version. In any PowerShell or Command prompt window***, enter

Code:

msinfo32.exe

and look in the first page [summary results].
*** Right-click on the Start button & choose Windows PowerShell


You could check your Bios for any reference to an incorrect display type but I really do not expect that to be relevant.
- Reboot
- As soon as the Dell logo appears, press F2 repeatedly until you see an acknowledgement or the Bios starts to open.
- The names of Bios sections vary but [using my own Bios' terminology] check
General, System information, Device information - Video controller and the other entries I that section [compare them to the names used in your specs, purchase documentation, Dell support list of driver updates]
- Video [mine just has a brightness adjustment there and that would be no use to you]

Denis

joeandmarg0 said:

Have you tried using AC power only,with the battery completely disconnected and preferably removed?

Does the fault happen during POST or when Win 10 loads?
If it occurs during bios activity,then shutdown,disconnect all power,remove the motherboard circular battery,noting the positive/negative orientation.
Press and hold the power button for about 15-20 seconds,which discharges the capacitors.
Then replace the circular battery and AC power and restart.
The above procedure resets the bios to Default settings.

Will try the battery suggestion and see what happens. Thanks.
Not sure what you mean by POST? As far as I can tell (since it's not my machine and the user's memory and observation powers aren't always spot-on), it starts soon after the machine is switched on. It is set up to offer the options of booting to Windows 10 or to Safe Mode, which stays onscreen for 20 seconds. He believes it has appeared onscreen while this message is displayed, and afterwards, but always disappears before the log on screen picture appears.

Does this mean it's during BIOS activity?

And have a think about why, "It is set up to offer the options of booting to Windows 10 or to Safe Mode". Was this set up deliberately or is the computer forcing the appearance of that choice?

Denis

Try3 said:

If that is correct then you can ignore any driver [in fact, any Windows factor at all] as being the cause.

I have had Dell laptop displays that have had lines across them but they have always persisted in Windows as well.

Is your Bios up to date? Go to Dell support, enter your Dell Service tag and check.
Denis

Thanks for your suggestion. I will look at this tomorrow when my head is clearer.

I had a similar problem on my Dell laptop which was due to the GPU cable between the motherboard and display which had worked looses at the display connection due to a partly broken hinge. I fixed the hinge and reconnected the cable using Dell's free online service guide but had to completely disassemble the laptop to do so.

Okay, picking up on a number of comments, this is the situation so far:

The LCD selftest didn't show any problems.

The driver is the latest one.

The bios has been updated to the latest available.

The laptop has a 'Safe Mode' option in case it's ever needed; we put it on there following one of Brink's tutorials.

It is very difficult to monitor this issue as it is intermittent. For example, after running the LCD selftest the lines were not seen the next few times the laptop was switched on. We did finally manage to record the lines, and I am attaching a screenshot.

This time the lines only show once, briefly. I have seen them show several times on other occasions. And I have been told that one time the lines appeared when the Windows login screen appeared - but only once.

The laptop is slow to boot up, though the time varies a bit. It is a few years old now. Don't know whether either of these would make a difference.

What hasn't yet been tried is removing the battery, which will be the next option, before removing the motherboard circular battery.

Any further suggestions would be welcomed.