Computer screen is acting like it's on drugs.. am I screwed?

[sethwbrown]

I took this short youtube video of my laptop screen mid-freeze and sudden return to normalcy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46vYGfFL2...e=youtu.be

A bit more info: over the last couple days my screen will take these 5 to 20 second vacations where the screen begins to slowly distort more and more until it is a complete blur, then suddenly return to normalcy. It has gone hours without happening, and there have been 10 minute stretches when it's happened 5 times. While the screen is frozen, the computer is still operating normally behind it. So if I click something online and the screen freezes at that moment, when it snaps back to normalcy the page will have loaded in the meantime.

Computer is a Dell Inspiron, about 2 years old. Is it destined to be garbage soon?

Update: It happened while I was typing this. I took 4 photos over about 10 seconds
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2eg8hht&s=6
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=345bler&s=6
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=14xji84&s=6
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=17465k&s=6

[hertz]

Have a similar problem, most of the time I just move the screen up and down and that fix it..

[Dell Inc.]

Hello sethwbrown,
My name is Krishna and I work for the Social Media and Community Team at Dell. Based on the symptoms, It's more likely that you have a LCD failure. Try the troubleshooting steps mentioned in the link below and see if it helps.

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/g...cid=266426

Also, If you want to e-mail me your Service Tag number and current shipping address, I can have a look at your warranty status to see what options we have. You can reach me at Krishna_KRN@Dell.com

Regards,
Dell-Kris K
Dell Social Media and Communities

[Renee G]

Two options - graphics card or the monitor itself.

Dell.com has a diagnostics program (free) on the Technical Support page - try running it and see what the results of the tests are.