I have a problem with a user’s laptop. It’s a Latitude D610, running Windows XP Professional SP2.
Basically, once the Laptop is on, after hooking up an external output device (Monitor or Projector), there seems to be no problems at all. But, pressing Fn + F8 to switch to the external display will trigger several interesting symptoms. These are the most obvious I’ve come across:
– MS Office (tested with MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2003) applications will automatically zoom the view to the maximum value available (regardless of the document in question, or even when launching the applications to create new document).
– Internet Explorer will automatically switch the font view to the largest size available.
– Some, but not all, Explorer windows appear to lock the scroll down capability. I’ve seen specifically the Add/Remove Programs view will display the scroll bar, but clicking on it to scroll a page or just to slide the bar will make the entire window flicker and will return back to the top.
Rebooting while leaving the device connected seems to correct the problem. This leads me to believe that the issue was related to software.
I tried to re-install any alternate Video driver I could find, both for the Mobile Intel 915GM/GMS,910GML Express Chipset and for the external monitor and projector that I’ve tested.
I even went as far as swapping the hard drive with another, newer imaged hard drive, and the symptoms followed the original hard drive. I tried to install the exact same version of drivers on the affected hard drive, to no avail. I’m almost convinced it’s an issue related to the driver and/or another piece of software installed on the machine.
I found a thread about this issue on the Dell forum, but no replies yet. Has any one else seen or experienced these symptoms? Anyone else has found a fix?
The end user is trying to avoid, if at all possible, re-imaging his hard drive.
