This is driving me nuts.
Dell Latitude 610. WinXP SP2 (my company's corporate build) 1G RAM

The display started acting up as soon as I got it (from work). By acting up I mean...the display settings were getting lost. I lost wallpaper on my 2nd day. Both my second and 3rd day I was losing my refresh rates...they were defaulting back to 60Hz.

I'm not worried about the wallpaper (which has stayed put after resetting it), but the refresh rates are driving me nuts. I am using it undocked right now and the screen flicker is driving me nuts. Yet, Display Properties is only showing refresh rates of 50hz interlaced, or 60 hz.

I've rebooted, I've dialed down the resolution....nothing seems to help! Its bloody aggrevating that a laptop panel that can do 1400 at True Color has to run at 60 Hz.

The only "unknowns" to the system have been Trillian (which I have since uninstalled) and my Verizon card...which is a PCMCIA device mounted by the machine as a USB.

Any suggestions...before I attempt to download the drivers?

Thank you very much....

I'd lean towards a driver issue. Neither of the unknowns strike me as problematic in this case.

Is your laptop plugged in or are you running off the power cord. You may have hardware settings made for your computer that are loading up every time you start you computer.

This may sound wierd but check your power settings in the control panel. See if anything is out of the ordinary.

Under the display properties you can click on the settings tab and there should be an option for your video card selection there. Mine is a Radeon on my laptop...make sure that doesn't have anything generic in there. Play with your screen resolution and color quality....see if that helps any. There is an advance icon at the bottom that you can click on and see if there are any settings in there out of the ordinary.

Hardware profiles are found in the control panel -- system --- then click on hardware profiles. I'm not sure if you are familiar with these settings but you might be able to figure something out with them...if not let us know.

Not to burst your bubble Dell has been rather lax with putting their computers together lately. I have had a lot of ram chips not put in all the way and 2 laptops had the wiring to the monitor not put on all the way.

Sorry for the rambling.....I'm quite famished....

I have two different hardware configs...docked for the office and undocked when at home. When docked and using the CRT, the screen does 85 Hz just fine. When undocked, it doesn't.

Interesting about the power...I did check, but nothing looks amiss. Device manager looks good, too. I'll probably deal with the flicker over the weekend and have my IT ninjas check it out when I'm in training next week. They may want to know why a freshly ghosted (I think...) machine is acting up.

That's my excuse for saying that I SO do not want to fix computers this weekend.

My bubble isn't bursted at all about the Dell. It's my work machine, it's also heckuva lot faster than my own Toshiba. ;)

Dell has been losing ground though....specially in tech support.

Dells are still good just they are starting to have more defects.

It probably is a driver issue....

Laptops I usually recommend IBM, Dell, Acer in that order....Desktops I usually recommend Dell, Acer. (Actually tell people to do a custom made desktop but they generally don't listen to that....lol.)

Downloaded the video adapter driver, NO change in the refresh rate. My IT guy thinks that the panel is only capable of doing 60Hz refresh.


HUH???

He offered to get me a new machine...not sure if having a machine that is 1 week newer will make that much of a difference but...worth a try.

If the driver doesn't do it, my guess would be possible faulty hardware. Haven't run into any bad screens myself, but I'm not an expert on laptops either. :)

Downloaded the video adapter driver, NO change in the refresh rate. My IT guy thinks that the panel is only capable of doing 60Hz refresh.


HUH???

He offered to get me a new machine...not sure if having a machine that is 1 week newer will make that much of a difference but...worth a try.

I dont believe that the TFT Display would only be cabable of doing 60 Hz refresh. What resolution are you using? It sounds like the laptop still thinks it is using a regular monitor when it is undocked.

Not sure, Chandril. I wonder if perhaps the monitor driver needs to be replaced. I'll need to call Dell for that one, there is no way I can determine which monitor is mine by cross-referencing the service tag on support.dell.com.

When my laptop is docked, I run 1400 at 85 Hz, with a CRT that is undoubtedly older than my computer. Undocked, I run 1400 at 60 Hz. I would prefer to run 1280 undocked, but the screen looks oddly fuzzy when I select that resolution.

Windows recognizes that I have two seperate monitors, but Monitor 1 (the flat panel) is unable to refresh any faster than 60Hz.

My IT guy said that he doesn't ghost the machines.

Bob may have the most logical answer...it may very well be a defective flat panel. Either that or XP is being an errant child...

If you are using a monitor from the dock there is a setting that switches between the monitors. My laptop has an external monitor setting and the laptop monitor setting. It I believe is in the display settings. I might be thinking of the dual monitor support though.