Inspiron 17r--LCD test patterns?

Teraforce · 01-09-2012, 01:54 PM

So my mom's Inspiron 17R just did something really weird a few minutes ago. The screen turned into a mess of flickering lines, and then it started cycling through what appeared to be test patterns. The pattern was Black --> White --> Red --> Green --> Blue --> Horizontal Grayscale Gradient --> Vertical Grayscale Gradient--> (repeat). The fan was running extremely hard, too. The machine was otherwise completely locked up; I had to hold the power button down to force it off.

The machine is working just fine now. What could have caused this to happen? Was this just a fluke, a virus, or a hardware failure? I'm kind of thinking it's a hardware issue, but the machine is less than 6 months old... any ideas?

Tsunade_Hime · 01-09-2012, 10:10 PM

Did you check the Event Log for any funky events/errors? Has it come back?

Teraforce · 01-10-2012, 05:17 AM

Haven't checked the event log yet; it did come back several hours later that same day. I'll let you know if I can find anything in the even log as soon as possible.

Tsunade_Hime · 01-10-2012, 04:02 PM

Try to display it externally and see if it happens? Did you try updating drivers?