Hey,

My Acer (about 3 years old) has had a pixelated display problem. A
Google search showed that this was a common problem in Acer laptops due
to a bad soldering job on the display adapter. It is usually OK to deal
with, but I wanted to try see if I could fix it myself. After removing
the keyboard, I couldn't figure out how to get to the display adapter.
With the keyboard removed, I turned the laptop on and the display
seemed to be working fine. I launched Battlefield 1942 to start working
the display adapter, and there was no pixelation.

I put everything back together, except for one of the bottom Keyboard
screws (which is right next to the display adapter) thinking it would
put less stress on the VGA chip. Everything still looked fine until I
plugged the laptop into AC power. Instantly the screen became
pixelated.

I'm trying to figure out what could be causing this. My guess is there
is extra voltage going through the adapter when the AC is plugged in. I
don't know how to work around this though. I'm wondering if there is a
way to reduce the voltage or current coming from the AC.

In the mean time, I'll see if I can find another AC adapter with the
same output and try that. Any help or ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks

I also wanted to add that the BIOS screens do not display correctly
either. Rather then being pixelated however, random characters show up
on the screen (like tilde, the fraction '1/4', @ symbols). I'm not sure
what that means.

I also tried using a power supply with less output then the laptop
needs, it didn't make a difference.