I just bought a used Dell XPS M170 laptop yesterday and am afraid I got cheated. This morning the monitor went white several times and I had to force shutdowns and then reboot only for the screen to go white again and again. What is the problem with this thing?

What are the BIOS versions and what are the mother board revision numbers?

The CCFL lamp is a tiny fluro tube and is located at the bottom of the screen behind a reflector. The inverter supplies high voltage to the CCFL lamp with a wire soldered to each end of the CCFL lamp and connected to the inverter by connectors.

First of all make sure that there is a wireles adapter on your laptop.
There are some XPS M170 Models without one.
If you have one, we can try to solve the problem?
1. Make sure that the driver of the Wifi adapter and the Chipset are propertly installed. Try to download the newest driver from the dell web site accordng your os
2. If there is a third party conection software like Conection manager or else, deinstall it an let windows manage your networks
Hope this helps you. I will need a screenshot and some further descriptions in order to solve the problem if the 2 solutions above dont help.

You either have to call dell or you can get unlock code on ebay for a small fee..

http://cgi.ebay.com/Bios-password-Unlock-dell-XPS-M1210-M170-M140-Gen-2-/180638359885?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a0ee2a14d

Hello,

I am going to provide you a manual for your laptop, it is a html manual provided by Dell, it is completely free, just click here

Wish you luck,
Lucas

Take out your ram sticks and put them back in. Also disconnect your hard drive and reconnect it. Then restart. If this doesnt help you may have a blown power supply.

You can reset your CMOS by removing the battery from the motherboard to reset the BIOS settings to factory defaults.

Here is a good starting point

http://www.fixya.com/support/r3581893-how_to_troublehoot_a_portable_compouter_

while starting your computer means while you powering on your computer just press "Fn" + "X" button & try.......... it might solve your problem

C:\program~1\Mywebs~1\bar\1.bin\m3plugin.dll problem