Knot;
Dunno about Tiffany's problem, reallly-- all you can do is some detective work (or tell Tiffany to do it).
First thing I think I'd do is leave the old monitor connected for a while, since although it is a "funhouse mirror", at least you can see Something. While you are there, make sure card isn't out of place. They screw cards in, but occasionally something pulls them out of place.
Check out BIOS setting, make sure it is VGA/Other, not CGA nor monochrome. I am sure you can walk her through that check.
Next, you might look at her computer to see if it is booting up in SAFE mode. An LCD monitor and its card should be able to handle that, but maybe Dell is making an assumption about resolution that the operating system has made a monkey of. It won't be hard to tell if it is in safe mode, and if it IS, this is actually fortunate, since it saves you a step later in this detective story...
Now, if you can see Windows in the funhouse mirror, move the mouse pointer to a clear area of desktop, right click, select Properties, settings. Display properties may have changed from the way it was setup, and this means the card is doing only what it was told to do. Look at the resolution; if there is a tab for it, look to see what the refresh rate is, and also the polarity of the signal.
If you've got that info, you need to either change the settings so as to conform to Tiffany's old monitor you have hooked up, or verify they are correct for her new monitor. If you can't get there, or it's just too difficult to read and change settings, exit Windows and reboot in Safe mode (F8 key must be pressed right at the moment after your computer has displayed its BIOS box... using another computer, print off the instructions for Tiffany from
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/capture/safemode.html and she'll get it).
In Safe mode, she may have a stable (though low-res) picture. If so, we know the settings were just messed up. Get the proper monitor specs from Dell website (don't bother with phone support, its awful) and fix them. Then rehook new monitor.
If Safe mode yields nothing you can look at properly, we have to assume problems in Hardware rather than a boogered setting. The FIRST hardware thing to check is the stupid Cable. If you are using two different cables for the monitors (likely), remember that the new flatscreen thingy was designed to have different signals than the old, so you can't automatically say "bad picture with two monitors and two cables, can't be that". Oh yes it can. Bad cable on new monitor, good cable but bad settings on old monitor. With old monitor hooked up, if you can change Display settings and get a good stable display, do that and then do the computing you need to do (all those messages she hasn't retrieved). If she can use her old monitor with settings appropriate for It, then we have to say, card good, must be new cable or new monitor.
Experimentation is not going to hurt anything, long as you don't bend pins. So, put settings back to new monitor specs, reboot, plug in new monitor, jiggle cable all around, both ends. Anything change as you are doing this? If so, order new cable. You'd be surprised how often cables are the culprit in monitor mysteries.
If nothing has changed for the better on the new monitor, and you found the card is okay, it's a good thing Tiffany held on to that old monitor. In electronics, it's not out of the question that something "done blowed" in the new monitor. ANY computer shop, not just Dell, can do you the simple favor of telling you whether it works. Pay them the fifteen or so to verify the problem, THEN send it to Dell to fix.
Well, I am sure you and Tiff have done some or all of this, but Good luck, hope you find the cure. If so, post it please!
Linear Mode
