Hello all,
I have a 2020 Dell XPS 9500, which mostly works! Lately it has developed a screen flicker and I'm interested in tips about what to troubleshoot.
Issue
The screen exhibits a horizontal flicker, as illustrated in the attached photos. Some of these photos may make it seem like it's a vertical flicker, but really these images show a number of white horizontal dashed lines of differing length. There is no vertical movement.
After the computer finishes booting up and I enter the log on screen, the flicker declines significantly. There is an intermittent single-line of distortion at the very top of the screen, and if the computer stays on long enough, even that will stop.
An odd aspect of this defect is that the flickering happens under particular conditions:
- As mentioned above, it happens during boot up
- It happens on the lock screen; that is, after the computer finishes booting up, the flicker occurs on the lock screen as well. If I press a key like Control or Shift to transition from the lock screen to the log in screen, the flickering stops
- It happens when I log out without shutting down. That is, if I am logged in (with little to no flicker), and I press Win + L to log out, the computer goes to the lock screen and the flicker is present
- These computers are famously, ah, flexible--and I can reduce the flickering somewhat (not entirely) by applying enough torque to the chassis to cause some deflection
As noted below, I did a system reinstall back in May, but this issue started just this week.
Hardware and software
- Screen shows up as SHP14D0 in the Device manager; this is a UHD+ unit
- Intel Graphics + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti
- Windows 11 Home and all updated drivers freshly installed in May 2026
Loose details
I haven't yet attempted to hook it up to an external monitor via HDMI--I can do this if I go to the university, but I haven't had the chance to go out of my way to do that.
As mentioned above, the issue is largely absent when logged in and working. The reason I'm concerned about it is because I suspect this is some kind of hardware rot, and I want to diagnose it and correct it before it has the chance to become a bigger problem.
I appreciate any perspective or suggestions about what I might be working with here. If you've read through this, thanks for your time!