Dell E1505 - weird blackout/freezing issues

Hi guys,

I've had my Dell e1505 since around December of 2006. Overall, I haven't had any serious problems with it. That is until now of course. Just some background info on the specs of my machine, all of which is completely stock:

CPU: Intel core 2 duo T7200 2.0ghz
RAM: 2gig PC2-4200 ram (Hynix is the brand i think?)
VID: ATI X1400 256mb
HDD: 80gb 5400rpm hd
OS: Windows Media Center w/ SP3 and latest updates
LCD: 15.4" WSVGA+


The problem occured for me about 5 days ago when i was just watching a video on youtube. I went to take the laptop off of my lap to put it on the table and as I am doing this, the monitor just goes blank. At first, I thought this might just be an LCD issue, but I wasn't able to shut down the system using keyboard shortcuts or get any response out of the system, so I had to power it down. When I tried to restart the system, the monitor would stay blank and as far as I could tell, the system wasn't booting. All I would hear is like the first click sound, but I couldn't hear fans running or see/hear any hard drive activity. I also tried using an external monitor to see if I got any picture, but I had no luck there also.

I ended up taking action by reseating various components, like the battery, memory and hdd - no improvement. I took those copmonents back out then decided to take off the hinge cover and I reseated the lcd cable, then put back in the the ram/hdd/battery. Bam - booted up just fine. I wasn't really sure what I did, but I figured I saved the day!

Well, last night the problem came back. I took the same action, except my success rate was like 1 out of 3 attempts and to be honest, I'm doubting whether the LCD cable had anything to do with it. I had this problem happen about 3 times in a hour and its to the point where I'm afraid to move the thing because it will black out on me. I feel like i'm just delaying the inevitable by blindly reseating components when there must be some other reason why the problem is occuring.

Any advice you all may have on some fixes to try or what parts I may want to consider looking into would be great. I have a pretty long history with dealing with desktop hardware, but I don't have much experience when it comes to laptop hardware.

Thanks in advance all.

I bought my E1505 in the same timeframe. My extended warranty expired a few days ago and I started experiencing problems with my monitor. It started as a blue screen parity error. Now is just a crappy screen quality and low resolution that can not be fixed. Dell Support gave me access to a earlier version of the driver for thr AT! x1400 but that still doesn't help. Now they are saying I need to restore with Norton Ghost which I did not purchase but limited function version was preloaded.

I do not know who to listen to. I need help.