a huge problem

(forgot to say, its a laptop)
i was browsing the internet today and my computer got all pixilated and weird colors(mostly yellow) for half a second then went black with a bunch of verticle blue, teal and green bars. i pressed the power button and it turned off (i think it shut down normaly due to the time it took) now when i turn it on it gets those bars which slowly fade to greyish and blend togeather. all of the lights on the computer come on as normal and i can toggle caps lock and the light responds. i have tried turning it on and off a few times but it isnt working. i opened up the bottom but nothing looked wrong (i dont know too much about hardware so im not sure, but there were no visable melted or burnt areas. the fan comes on as normal and when i press allot of buttons and mess with the mouse i get the ram(i think) light flashing showing its thinking. the computer is about 9 months old, but has been used allot (i am a hardcore gamer). from what i know about comps it looks like a grafics card thing (i think its using gfoce 8400). it is a dell inspiron 1420 if that helps. i will try to post a picture of the screen tomorrow if i can. does anyone have any idea how to fix it, or at least get the data? all of my school work is on there (im in collage so its a big deal):cry any help is greatly appreciated!

 

I've seen this happen before on laptops.... the video chip has fried. Some (very, very few) laptops have removable video cards. The limited research I did tells me that the 1420 is not one of the few with a removable video card (but I did some very limited research and therefore I might be wrong). This means that the average home user cannot fix a problem like yours. You must send the laptop to a repair center with the ability to remove/replace chips on the main system board. This requires specialized soldering gear and a great deal of skill. If it's still under warranty, Dell should replace the PC, but you'll lose your files unless you pull the hard drive and burn your stuff to CD/DVD before sending it out. If you want to pay for a repair if it's not under warranty, expect to pay around $250 US. If you plug an external monitor into the VGA port on the back of the laptop, and still get the messed up picture, then it is definitely the video chip. However, if you get a normal picture on an external display, then the chip is OK and the problem is with the LCD, the inverter, the backlight (unlikely) or the LCD video cable. Pinning down the exact problem in this case can be a bit tricky unless you have some experience with such things, but replacing an LCD/inverter/backlight/video cable is fairly easy and can be done at home with some patience and an eye for detail.

 

i have experienced a computer crash before. i can not fix the problem. but i have used a data recovery software called easeus data recovery wizard to retrive my files, not all of the files are recovered but i can still have back most of them.

 

thanks a ton for the info dlb. scpanda, how does that work and how much does stuff like that cost?

 

after the computer crashed, i could not access the windows system. so i had to connect my hard disk to another computer. i hope i could pull my data out. but the bad thing is the computer recognized my hard disk as unformatted, and asked me if i would like to format it. of course i can not format it. so i had to buy some data recovery software to help. fortunately, throgh their support, it did work. that is amazing for me!!! and i cost about 60$ to buy easeus data recovery wizard.

 

zling I would check with Dell if the laptop is only 9 months old. It should still be under warranty. You can use the service tag number to check on original configuration and warranty information at Dell Support. You might have a replaceable vid card. As dlb said, try hooking up an external monitor. If the same thing happens, your video is bad.
Had an Inspiron 9300 with the same sort of problem. Dell replaced the vid card twice and finally replaced the motherboard.

 

thanks for the help guys, it is still under warenty and im gonna have it fixed.