Vista - Pixelated screen

Hi I am a new forum user and also a bit of a rookie on the Pc I recently bought a new Dell xps 420 w/vista home premium 64bit desktop and I have been getting an occasional problem with a pixelated screen it covers the whole screen with black and white and red squares and the only way I can get out of the problem is shutdown manually as I cant even see the start screen to get to the shutdown or restart can anyone give me any help thanks, DANNY B.

Hello Dbrogan70, and welcome to Vista Forums.

Your video drivers may have become corrupted. You might see if uninstalling and reinstalling your graphic card and monitor drivers can help.

Shawn

Thanks Shawn for the quick response I will let you know how it came out after I find out how to get to the drivers to uninstall them remember I am a rookie thanks again Danny B

Danny,

This will help show you how to uninstall the driver, but be sure that you have the driver installation file ready to reinstall before you do though.

Uninstall Device and Device Driver

Before doing any driver updates you'll need to know what kind of video card you have.

From what you describe, it sounds like video artifacts. The most common cause is an overheating (usually due to overclocks), or a failing video card . They can also be caused by software - bad/corrupted video drivers, or an overclocking. You can see some good examples of video artifacting in this article - Diagnose video card problems by comparing with example corrupted screens.

“IF” that is the case, try updating your video card drivers “after” you determine which card you have. If that doesn’t cure your problem, then considering that the computer is still under warranty (?) I’d have it looked at by Dell.

One other thing to look at is the display monitor. If you have another monitor laying around, see if that one has pixelation when used with your machine. If not, then it could be your monitor that's going bad (or "maybe"...missing drivers).

Good luck

Enter BIOS and wait for about 4-5 mins to see if you see the pixels| the best way to check the monitor functionality is remove the data cable from computer and you should see the monitor self test feature check, look for pixels| IF no pixels are found then its an issue with either the video card or OS| then as suggested by Brink, you should update the video card driver|