


<much deleted>

Sounds like a memory conflict problem, which can cause truly weird symptoms 
like these. Call Dell tech support (or better, post to them on CSERVE if you
have an account) and get the memory range(s) used by video RAM on your
machine. The block windows from using those ranges with an
EMMEXCLUDE= statement in the 386Enh section of SYSTEM.INI. You probably
should include a statement excluding the same range from EMM386 or whatever
memory manager you use in CONFIG.SYS.