Inspiron 530 vertical linse, and won't boot up

[gordon33]

Hello

The 18 month old Inspiron 530 came with ubuntu 7.04 and up dates were in stalled.
Now I have vertical liens on the moniter and it usually won't boot up. If the blue "DELL" start up screen is clear (no vertical lines) the system will boot up. However the screen resolution is poor. It should be 1024 x 768, but it is around 600 x 400. The resolutioon pull down menu does not alow for more then the 600 x 400. Origionaly many options were advalible. What is going on with this thing? What checks or fixes can be made?

Gordon33

[gbrainin]

I'm going to take a stab in the dark and guess that it might be your video card. I, too, have a 7.04-vintage 530, and my video card got wonky in a very odd way a couple of months ago.

You can certainly mess around with other things, but if you can borrow someone's video card for a test, it might be worth a shot.

[gordon33]

Gbrainin

Thank you for your reply. I think you are correct the video card is bad. I have been working on this for a while. The card from dell is about $94.00. Geek.com has a card for about $70.00 I am the kind of guy who hated to spend money on a part if I am not sure it will fix the problem. I am going to have to buck up an take the chance. Worst thing is i would have an extra card.

Thank you

Gordon33

[gordon33]

Thank you

I happly in stalled the ASUS EAH3450/DI/256M Radeon HD 3450 GDDR2 PCI-E Video Card. The screen looks great.

The card came with a disk to help the new card's instalation. BUT, Ubuntu did all the work by its self. Ubuntu was even kind enough to tell me to shut down and restart the computer.

Thank you all for your help.

Gordon33