Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

After a couple years of ordering (and being very satisfied with) ThinkPads, I decided to give Dell's E6400 a shot. The machine was ordered on 1/23, delayed twice, and finally made it to me on 2/16. Here's the email I sent off to our account Rep after 3 days of ownership:

This week I received the Latitude E6400 – Service Tag xxxxxxx - that was ordered on 1/23. Since its arrival I have experienced several significant problems with it, and wanted you to see the difficulties I am having and the mounting frustration level with it.

1. Day 1 - Pointing stick, left mouse button not working: Case # 634545183, Dell dispatch processed, to date there has been no service call. Issue pending.
2. Day 2 - BOOTMGR missing or corrupt: Case #634593104, the machine would not boot. I was told by Dell Gold Support that there was no fix and that Windows had to be re-installed. After spending 4 hours rebuilding the machine, the behavior was recreated this morning when I attempted to reboot it on the port replicator. It boots fine when not attached to the port replicator. Issue pending.
3. Day 2 - BSOD: Case # unknown (support rep working on it), since I’ve taken delivery on Monday, the machine has Blue Screen’ed four times and displayed a file named iavstor.sys as the reason for the crash. Issue pending.
4. Day 3 - DVD drive: Case # unknown (support rep working on it), the DVD does not stop spinning. After attempting to update the firmware per the instructions of support rep, the drive does not work. Support rep is recommending the DVD be replaced. I suggested to the support rep that considering the multitude of significant problems I’ve had with this unit, it needs to be replaced. She was going to speak to her manager to get approval and call me back. Issue pending.

So, in three days, I have spent four hours rebuilding the machine with Vista, two and a half hours on the phone with Gold Support, and still have machine that is broken and unstable. The price tag on the hours of lost productivity is now greater than the cost of the machine. To say I am disappointed and frustrated with Dell right now is an understatement.

Any assistance you can provide in restoring my faith in Dell and getting a replacement machine ASAP would be most appreciated.

Ten minutes after sending this email, I had a reply from the Account Rep's boss with assurances that a replacement machine order was already in process, and included a Case Number. The Account Rep called me back later to make sure I wanted the replacement to be configured exactly like the original, including Vista64. No additional communication since then. I'm giving them a A for effort but this hardware isn't inspiring the confidence that the Thinkpad's gave me. My .02 so far.

 

Wow kboyer, you had real bad luck. As you can read in this thread, most people are happy with their E6400's, although a few (myself included) have had minor issues.

The reply from Dell confirms what I have perceived from them: top-class support, which for me is better than the "legendary Thinkpad keyboards" (which have lots of flex IMO but ok).

I hope that second machine works properly.

 

Did you bother to do a reinstall of the computer when you got it? That is a step you should ALWAYS take. Your email seems a tad angry. I can almost guarantee if you read over this forum the answer to all of your issues is probably here. The Iastor.sys issue (or related files) means you need to install the latest chipset and matrix controllers. (i forget which of these has that particular dll). Before getting angry about a machine that may not have hardware defects, it is worth trying to reinstall and follow the dell-provided driver install order.

 

You're right. I am a tad angry. To have this many problems with a machine right out of the box is frustrating. Windows was re-installed from scratch and then updated with the most recent drivers directly from Dell's web site. I probably could spend a couple hours scouring this forum and find most of the answers. But is that what is expected of Dell users to get a brand new machine in a good and stable working condition?

To add insult to injury, I fixed one of the problems today. The BOOTMGR error that was being seen when trying to boot while on the port replicator was caused by a combination of a USB drive attached to the port replicator and the Legacy USB option enabled in the BIOS. Turning this option off solved the problem. Too bad the Gold Support rep wasn't willing or able to do the research necessary to figure this out, and instead pushed the burden to the customer by telling me that the only solution was to reinstall Vista.

However, I'm still left with a dead left mouse button (the one for the pointing stick, not the one for the touchpad) and a DVD-ROM that either doesn't read a disc or (when it does read a disc) never stops spinning.

 

you might want to try reseating the keyboard to solve the dead left mouse button problem. it is pretty straight forward to remove it, let me know if you want help. i am not saying you don't have a reason to be annoyed, just suggesting it might be more beneficial and less frustrating to you if you used the collective intelligence and willingness of myself and many other people on this forum. either way, good luck solving it, it does sound like you might have gotten a lemon.

 

Oh yea, you had bad luck kboyer.
This is really not normal. My machine works perfectly, like many others. Just remember something, when things go well, you have less people talking about it than wehn it goes bad. And you can see that just a very slim amount of people complained on this machine, and these manufacture errors, well gets fix very quickly especially if you have Next Business Day Onsite service where you have a technician that comes to your place stating form the next business day to the time you want. Well in your case, a new machine is needed. But as you can see, you get to keep your machine while you get a new one. so if you get it to work partially, then it's not bad, at least you can use it while you get the new one.

The problem with Dell preinstall OS, affects actually all manufactures. As they have a system with a image of your HDD, and all they do is once setup they just include windows updates and drivers (without uninstalling the previous drivers or if the uninstaller did a bad job), so at some point it will fail and a new image needs to be re-done on their side with a fresh windows and clean registry. So it is not the end of the world. In my case, like MANY others, this re-install step was not needed. But for you it seams you had both problem (software and hardware). I would say just ignore what happen (because it is normal, for any manufacturing facility, no mater what brand), and start your first impression on your coming up machine.

 

heh, if you look at the user reviews on the Dell site for the E6400...there's a ton of reviews that either have similar hardware/software problems like this or they complain that the thing was too big and gave it one star. What?

 

Yea I read those, many of the issues have nothing to do with the laptop, but that they don't know how to use Windows Vista. That is why all these 'user review' on sites like these would be ignore. And only read trusted review sites, where people are knowledgeable.

 

newer touchpad drivers released today!! 7.x2.101.216, A09 (from e6500 downloads). they dont claim to have much in the way of fixes/updates::

Fixes and Enhancements
- Fixed issue where the wheel of a PS/2 mouse didn''t work on dock.
- Combined 32 and 64-bit packages into a single release.

will see what it does to response though, they dont like to admit those bugs enough to include them in the info on the update.

 

anyone notice the top part of the touchpoint is where the click is?

as in, it takes a much softer touch to activate the click when you hit the top part rather than it taking a much harder tap when you try hitting the middle.

also, i just want to verify what johns review and my observations tell me...the keyboard has dimmer lights towards the top middle, right? is everyones like this? just making sure nothing is defective.