Tue. Jun. 19, 2007
Update: January 16, 2008—Mike Bukowski, a Technical Analyst from our Dell Customer Advocate team recently published a post that discusses other potential causes of vertical lines on notebook displays.
In April, I blogged about vertical lines appearing on some of Dell’s notebook LCDs. At that time, we found that a small number of 17” LCD displays shipped with Dell Inspiron 9200, 9300 and Dell XPS Gen 2 notebooks may develop a one-pixel wide vertical line may develop across the LCD screen over time.
In the time since then, we have found that there are other systems that are potentially affected. All of these shipped between December 2004 and December 2006:
- Inspiron 6000 and 8600
- Latitude D800 and D810
- Dell Precision Mobile Workstation M60 and M70
The cause of the vertical lines has been traced to one specific component used on a small number of LCDs shipped on the potentially affected systems. Dell uses LCDs from several manufacturers and many notebook models are manufactured with screens of the same size from more than one vendor. We have confirmed that the component in question was not used on any other Dell notebook LCDs.
Even if you have one of the potentially affected systems with the confirmed component, it does not mean your LCD will develop a vertical line. This specific issue happens on a portion of the 9 systems we're calling out as potentially affected. If you have a notebook display with a vertical line that's not called out here, we will provide traditional technical support to try to resolve the issue.
So what are we doing with customers who are affected with this specific issue? The same thing we've done with affected 17” displays: We will replace any LCD that develops a vertical line associated with this specific issue within three years of purchase, at no charge for parts and labor. Also, Dell will offer refunds to customers who paid Dell to replace LCDs affected by this issue.
So what do you need to do next? Please contact us. For customers in the United States, there are two ways to reach us.
Via Phone Number:
U.S. customers who are experiencing this issue, or who have paid to replace an LCD for this issue can call the appropriate Technical Support phone number listed below:
- U.S. Inspiron Technical Support: 1-800-624-9896
- Say “Technical Support”
- Enter your Express Service Code or say, “I don’t have it”
- Is your system for Personal or Business use
- Say “Notebook”
- Is your system an Inspiron, XPS, Latitude or Precision
Via Dell Chat: This is an option for customers with systems that are still under warranty. If you are out of warranty, please contact the U.S. Inspiron Technical Support phone number: 1-800-624-9896.
For customers outside the U.S. there are two ways to reach us as well:
Via E-Mail:
- Send an e-mail to vertical_line@dell.com. To help us route inquiries to the right global contacts, please use “Vertical Line Issue, <country name>” in the subject line of your e-mail—where <country name> refers to the country where you are located.
Via Phone Number:
- Go to support.dell.com
- Choose your country or region from the drop-down list
- Choose Contact Us
- Choose Technical Support
- Choose Call Technical Support