There seems to be an inherent fault that DELL are unable to resolve:-
The laptop on bootup produces repetitive 8 beeps and the LCD screen initially has thin coloured faded vertical lines. After extensive testing and contact with DELL support I am no closer to a solution other than DELL advice to change the whole motherboard I.e 90% of the laptop. The following may help others or hopefully may identify with someone who knows which component is actually faulty:-
The following diagnostics have been carried out:-
1. The laptop works fine connected to an external monitor - Except the damn thing keeps beeping so have plugged in some earphones.
2. Holding the D down on power up does produce the red/green cycle of colours on the Laptop LCD so would indicate the screen is ok.
3. Despite 2 and with the various internet threads and feedback I purchased a new LCD screen, this produced exactly the same fault.
4. The next advice was to change the LCD cable, but yet again still the same fault persists.
5. I then found a downloadable video diagnostic tool on DELL site so ran this on the laptop, the results stated everything was fine?
6. So back to DELL support explaining all of the above and the advice received is to change the motherboard as it might be a fault with the cable socket on the motherboard !! Approx £75.
I have spent enough time and money being misled by poor diagnostic advice, how can it be a socket on a board if the screen ‘D’ test cycles correctly through the colours, in theory it cannot be the video chip because the external monitor works and it cannot be the screen or cable as I have changed these (Unless the new screen has exactly the same fault).
Unless I find out the exact cause I will not be purchasing another DELL and certainly will not purchase a motherboard only to end up with the same problem in another 12 months or so.