Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

Does anyone know what's up with the 15% off Outlet coupon? There has been one every time I look at the Outlet for friends, but it disappeared last week. Do they usually make a new one?

 

Newest minimum power draw goes from 12.5w, down to roughly 11w with backlight on min, no bluetooth/wifi, and DCP max battery.

 

Hi Guys,
I received an email last Friday from Dell Technical Updates highlighting a few software updates for my E6500 (and all of them are relevant to E6400 too).

After applying the updates, notably the one for Intel Matrix Storage Manager and also the Audio IDT driver, I have 2 pieces of good news to highlight:

1. I no longer have the CPU sometimes stuck at 50% even on idle due to the process stacvs.exe hogging 1 CPU

2. My palm rest is now cooler - so looks like the Intel Matrix Storage Manager fix has reduced power consumption as it promised (see below). And even better, my fan doesn't run as often (previously it was practically always ON on low speed, now it's ON less)

So you might want to put in these patches too.

***********************************
The email I received:

Your Dell Technical Updates

New Files Available

System Utilities: Dell System Software, Utility, Windows Vista 32-bit, Multi Language, Multi System, v.6.2.0, A01
Criticality: Urgent
Release Date: 12/17/2008 12:00:00 AM
Description: Add support for the following Microsoft hot fixes: add 950233 add 949537 add 950570 add 946084 add 957526 add 955840 add 953403 add 953026 add 945518 add 950186

Audio: IDT 92HDxxx HD Audio, Driver, Windows Vista 32-bit, Windows Vista 64-bit, Multi Language, Multi System, v.6.10.0.6124, A05
Criticality: Recommended
Release Date: 12/18/2008 12:00:00 AM
Description: - Improves Audio Playback quality - Fixes issue where Microphone is not detected with certain 3rd party applications - Optimized power management of audio controller

Application: Dell ControlPoint Security Manager, Driver, Windows Vista 32-bit, Windows XP, Multi Language, Multi System, v.1.1.30, A07
Criticality: Urgent
Release Date: 12/19/2008 12:00:00 AM
Description: Initial Release

Serial ATA: Intel Matrix Storage Manager - Notebooks, Application, Multi OS, Multi Language, Multi System, v.8.7.0.1007, A04
Criticality: Urgent
Release Date: 1/8/2009 12:00:00 AM
Description: - Changes made to reduce power consumption improving battery performance. - Corrects random issues related to not being able read/write to and from CD/DVD optical drives.

Serial ATA: Intel Matrix Storage Manager - Notebooks, Driver, Windows Vista 32-bit, Windows XP, English, Multi System, v.8.7.0.1007, A05
Criticality: Urgent
Release Date: 1/8/2009 12:00:00 AM
Description: - Changes made to reduce power consumption improving battery performance. - Corrects random issues related to not being able read/write to and from CD/DVD optical drives.

 

thanks -- which thread are you referring to?

 

"Windows 7 on Latitude E6400", you can find it via the search.

 

I did a clean install of WinXP Pro a couple of weeks ago. Got all the fresh drivers from DELL website, used F6 floppy for IRRT. I was really happy with my E6400.
Today I wanted to use hibernate. So I chose hibernate from Shut down menu, the "Preparing to hibernate" window was displayed and that was it. There is some HDD activity at first and then nothing, it just stays like that (I left it like that and went out to lunch for an hour - no change when I returned). I have to use the 4sec PB hold to shut the computer down.
Any ideas?

EDIT:
Issue solved. I started looking for recently installed drivers.
The last one was Creative webcam driver offered by Windows Update. I used rollback (ended up at version 1.3.2.919)and all is fine now.

 

For the last 3 months I have been getting a random BSOD Stop error - 0x0000008e CI.dll

This will usually happens during system setup after syspreing on the e6400.
It does not happen every time (a least 1 out of every 5 times I re-image a computer)

I have been installing the latest drivers, bios and windows updates and they have not fixed this issue.
Any one have an Idea whats going on?. This is happening on multipliable 6400's so I do not think its a hardware failure

 

No idea. But I distrust the factory install... just a feeling. explorer.exe crashed on my E6400 virtually out of the box. Then BSODs and restores galore came along, so I clean installed and it's been solid ever since. Before installing, I ran Dell's DOS diagnostics and the results plus just the way it felt running the diags made me feel that the hardware was good and solid. If I were you, I would clean install one machine and see how it goes. And don't allow every recommended Windows Update unless you really need it. For instance, WU is offering a webcam update but my webcam is working fine, so no need. I just read another thread where this webcam update may have BSODed a system... they rolled it back to recover.

GK

 

This error message comes from fresh installs of vista enterprise. I removed the OS dell installs on the system. This error is very hard to track down.

 

This happens to me, too -- but with the stock Dell 7.15.11.7607 drivers. Seems okay undocked, but I get the same behavior when hot-docking or coming out of sleep mode when docked. Sigh.