The other day, there was a "breaking glass" sound from the projector and all of a sudden the color went to gray scale only. The main bulb is working fine, but a whole lot of little color glass pieces starting falling out. Which part is this?

Sounds like the color wheel may be bad

as your description, the color wheel should be shattered now. so you have to bur a new color wheel and replace it.

if you need any further help, you can freely contact me,

Have a nice day!
We supply original projector parts: lamp, bulb, Lcd panel, Lens, DMD chip, color wheel,
motherboard, powersupply ... with high quality and competitive price.
Jerry
Lampdeng Limited

yes try to check the bulb if broken but when you replace the bulb be sure not to touch the glass surrounding because if accidentally touch the glass their will be a mark appearing on the screen.

Please check the light tunnel and the reflector glass in the projector ,
it seems that the light tunnel or the reflector glass is failed

Have a nice day!
We supply original projector parts: lamp, bulb, Lcd panel, Lens, DMD chip, color wheel,
motherboard, powersupply ... with high quality and competitive price.
Jerry
Lampdeng Limited

This is undoubtedly a broke color wheel. The wheel is made up of four small slices of colored glass, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Clear. Each slice is fixed into a groove on a brass hub. The high-pitched "whirring" noise that you hear on start up is the wheel spooling up at high speed. If one of the "slices" comes loose from the hub it can break, bind or start scraping. Regardless, there is a sensor that reads the speed of the wheel and won't allow the unit to come fully on if the wheel doesn't come up to speed (which it no longer can). Bottom line...Game Over. It's simply too expensive to fix. I personally am hoping for a class action suit on this obvious piece of junk retailed by Dell. But think of all the extra money they are making from people rushing out and spending up to $300 for a bulb that won't solve the problem. Ahhh...gotta love free enterprise!

the color wheel has fallen apart and must be replaced. try googling the manufacturer for service.

Color wheel failed. Clean the glass pieces out loose in the unit and replace the color wheel assy with Toshiba part no: 23125963. No soldering is required, just a no. 2 phillips screwdriver and and a set of jeweler's phillips screwdrivers like Radio Shack has.

yr previous buld is it burn out or explode ?
if explode might be the tiny glass neeed to service (cleaning)
please do a tilt correction
do manually

did you have the fan on? usually it explodes because of excessive heat, make sure the fan works when you replace the bulb