Hello, this not a linux related question but I hope I can still get some advice.

I purchased this high end custom laptop over a week ago
( Sager 9082 )and recently on two occassions noticed wave like fuzzy display on my screen. This occured in the bios, on boot log messages and windows ( will be installing Debian later ). However, its been fine four days now. The manufacturers are saying I should wait till it happens again then record it with a camcorder.

They say otherwise they would only be able to speculate on the problem. For example cross talk in cables connecting the video card etc. I am thinking for such an expensive laptop I should't have cables with insulation problems.

I would appreciate any feedback regarding this problem. I have 3 years warranty on this but since I live outside the USA, I have to pay for shipping. Would you send it back straight away or wait till it happens again.

Do you think a minor drop might have caused this? If so, would it be terminal?

Many thanks in advance.

Regards
beugenb

That's a very hard question to answer. I agree that having some video or pictures of the effect happening, would go a long way toward trying to make any guesses as to what's causing it.

A "minor drop" could have caused any number of weird things to happen. What sort of minor drop are we talking about? How far a drop, and onto what sort of surface?

How much did you use the laptop before the drop, and did the effect happen at all? Or did the effect only become apparent after the drop?

Sasha

Hi Sasha, well I don't know. I am just speculating. This is a symptom just started for the first time last Monday in minor way and became very bad on Tuesday and has not occured since.

What do you mean by fuzzy? blury? liny? grainy?
Are you sure you just dont need glasses (Joking).
What is your screen resolution and color depth and have you changed it?

Well, I have Nvidia geforce GTX 280M with one gig ram using 1900 x 1200 resolution. So yes, I finding that I need to use glasses to read text on it. Additionally, a couple of regularly frequented websites are not optimized for my screen resolution. For example, www.rte.ie.

That aside, I don't know how else to describe the fuzziness. I have already seen a faulty video card. High frequency multicoloured wave like zig zags. When in the bios it was just small fuzziness at on a small part of the screen. When boot all the log messages were garbbled. In windows it was the biggest. I could not find any of the icons.

But again, the last time this happened it was Tuesday last. So apart from waiting for the next occurance I find it hard to speculate what this could be. Loose cables seem to be eliminated as I hear these are mostly soldered. Badly seated video card is also ruled out because in such a scenario i would either have display or none at all. The manufacturer has suggested cross talk via internal cables. I am thinking why would a high end laptop be using badly insulated cables.

I guess I am just going to have to wait till it occures again and take screenshot of it. Too bad, LQ does not allow screenshot or movie files.

BTW Sasha, i notice your using Slackware 64 bit. Is that distro using any of the following?

Gnome
KDE 4
GRUB


Many thanks

Hiya,

Yes, Slack64 has KDE 4.2.something by default, but I found it bloaty and slightly troublesome, so I'm using XFCE currently (though this version of XFCE I find has some obscure bugs too :/ ). Slackware doesn't come with GNOME, but there are some 3rd party Gnome builds for Slack. I can't speak to their greatness or lack thereof though; I haven't tried one in a long time.

GRUB, off top of my head, I can't recall if GRUB is available with a Slack install. LILO is the default option.


And: if you do end up with a screenshot, you can attach an attachment to a post. Go to "your LQ Profile" and look for "Manage Attachments"; from there you can upload an attachment and include it in a post; you can also just click the paper-clip icon when you are typing a post in the "Advanced" editor; alternately you can upload a picture to something like photobin, and just give us a link.

Kind regards
Sasha

Thanks i will send screenshot as soon as i get an opportunity.