E6410 Owner's Thread

All of the sanctioned drivers are on Dell.com. One might knowingly choose to source a more recent chipset or graphics driver from the respective OEM website... but I would never use some program to find drivers for me when I can easily find the right drivers in these few locations. And then I'd install them in the prescribed order.

I still suggest your best course of troubleshooting your slow boot problem, given your recent 'Easy Driver' reimage, is to reimage again using the Dell.com drivers for your system and OS. And watch your boot speed as your progress.

GK

 

Fingerprint reader. Has anybody been able to make use of this device inside Windows 7?

I would like to use it to login, but it doesn't seem to be recognized even though I've installed the Control Point drivers.

 

you need to wave software to make use of it as far as i know.

 

Okay, here's 4 major complaints I have against my E6410. I'm on the latest BIOS (A09) and pointing device drivers.

1. The system fails to resume from standby a lot. This happens every now and then, but when I turn on the computer from standby the screen is blank, but the Wifi and Numlock lights are on (but non-responsive). It stays this way, and I'm forced to shut it down and do a restart (thus losing my data).

2. Resume from hibernate is super slow (~1 minute). The issue here is that there's this long 30 second dead period between the Windows loading screen and the login screen where the computer seems to be doing absolutely nothing - screen is blank, and the HDD access light is off. The lock lights are unresponsive.

3. Pointing stick is buggy. Occasionally holding down the left mouse button will cause the stick to move downwards.

4. Screen tends to vary brightness by itself even with the ambient light sensor off. For some reason the screen shifts brightness by around half a step in brightness every now and then, which is really annoying.

Otherwise this is a great laptop. Performance is great, the design is excellent, the thing is very sturdy, and the keyboard is very good.

 

Does anyone have a periodic problem with the Fn brightness keys not working? I can switch between auto and manual, but sometimes the adjustment keys don't do anything, and I think can't change it in the mobility center either.

Usually closing the lid and opening it again would resolve it, but recently I had to reboot.

Since I can't reliably reproduce it yet I don't know if it's directly related to standby/hibernation but it seems to be.

Using DCP v1.5, I know there's some kind of more modern software I tried once but it looked horrible and had popups in the middle of the screen, if anyone knows it resolves this issue I can try installing that and hopefully disable the screen overlays.

 

Sounds like you have several driver issues...
I have my Dell E6400, and NEVER had any issues, despite sleeping several times a day, and using my laptop intensively.

 

My E6410 has been a nightmare of driver conflicts and latency. I gave up on sleep mode and hibernate. The root cause of the latency issue seems to be Dell's own security and system management software. Honestly, I even considered buying an E6420 as an everyday substitute. Decided against it after the cases started popping apart!

 

Yup. Gave up on sleep, standby and hibernate. With the E6410, you either leave it on or turn it off. The last couple of BIOS update have resulted in horrifically slow boot times - not a Windows problem but a BIOS problem. Seriously, how does Dell manage to make BIOS so slow?

Yes indeed. The point stick is HORRIBLE in comparison to a ThinkPad of yesteryear. I'm not sure if it's a hardware or driver issue.

The ambient light sensor was entirely unusable, perhaps the worst I've ever seen. It appeared to adjust the brightness at random.

"Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play....."

I have to admit that I do enjoy typing on the E6410 but I'm not convinced that it's quite as study as metal case would make you believe. Performance has been compromised by the driver issues to the extent that the E6410 with a factory install had worst video and audio playback than a consumer notebook with far lower specs.

 

my e6410 had such a horrible problem with the audio jack sending oddball noise through my (many) sets of headphones that I seriously think there is an underlying manufacturer design problem with it. I tested 4 systems out in my workplace, in addition to mine and all exhibited the same noise with minor variances in volume.

Dell has since "captured" mine for testing and gave me an E6420 as a replacement.

Did anyone else experience crazy feedback from the audio jacks?

 

If you're referring to an intermittent "skip," then it's the Dell driver/latency issue. After I uninstalled DCP and the other Dell security and system management "bloatware" the issue went away.