Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

Intel test each CPU during production and then assign appropriate voltages (at least that's what we are told). You might want to look into undervolting the CPU. The guide is here. I am running my P8600 with 9x voltage of 1.05V (it crashed at 1.025V). Your CPU will be different but I am sure you can get the voltage down. You can get a good indicator within 5 minutes by just stepping down the 9x voltage (having set up a profile) by about 1 step ever 10 seconds and seeing where the computer crashes. Then do a long stress test at 2 or 3 steps higher. My voltage drop (1.1375 -> 1.05V) drops the maximum temperature by 4 or 5C.

John

 

I ordered my E6400 with a 200gb HD with free fall sensor, it's a Seagate Momentus 7200.2. I'm really annoyed with it's constant clicking, mostly when Windows is idle. With each click the HD led also blinks, and when windows is idle it's with a 1-2 sec interval, it's like having an analog clock next to the computer just that the ticking isn't each second but a little more random.

I tried with preinstalled and updated xp sp3 with latest dell drivers, reinstalled fresh windows xp sp2 (no dell drivers), fresh install of Vista 32bit business (no dell drivers) and they all do the same (indexing service stopped). I also tried to see if I could stop the HD led from flashing (and the clicking) by closing every none critical process (was down to 17 processes), also stopping none critical services, and disabling none critical drivers, but the HD led (and clicking) just keeps going when idle and doing light HD access. When the HD is doing alot of reading/writing the sound isn't there. For example clicking first appear when XP shows the welcome screen. I have also flashed to Bios A05.

I also tried the popular "no-clicking" solutions like hdparm with -B and -M parameter (and all kind of values) and HDTUNE and NHC. with no success. Also tried a number of HD diag tools (incl. Dells) that says HD is fine and not faulty.

I played a bit with BIOS also trying to set HD performance to bypass, quiet and performance setting. Also tried setting sata operations to AHCI and IFFT but not ATA (blue screened my preinstalled XP).

The clicking is only noteable in a quiet environment, but I like my environment quiet.

Else I pretty much like my E6400, but at the moment rather sit with my quiet MSI wind (which is not really suited for work).

So first theory is I think it's probably the HD itself and probably not a faulty HD (all HD diag tools I tried said it was fine), but it's a feature of the HD, maybe the free fall sensor technology having this as a side effect. Second theory is it's BIOS/Driver related, I remember on another computer I had, I could stop constant HD led flashing by disabling the DVD drive which was apparently sending activity messages to the IDE controller when idle.

Atleast SSD is becoming less expensive so in 6 months I would just buy a SSD, but they're still a bit steep and my line of work requires a nice amount of hd space.

Any thoughts, experiences ?

 

I had the same issue. Dell tech support had me delete all of the USB drivers, allowing the computer to refind and reinstall drivers on the next boot. Stopped the vast majority of the problems, but still have a lock up or two, but now much less frequent

 

Thank you. This is potentially helpful. Sounds like we might be on the right track with the USB idea.

Where did you delete the drivers? Device Manager I presume?

Thanks again for the response.

 

Some HDDs are inherently noisier than others. I don't have personal experience of the recent Seagate HDDs. The rigid mounting of the HDD in the chassis does help noise propagation. I couldn't hear my new WD5000BEVT when it was in an external enclosure but i can hear it now it is internal, but only in an otherwise quiet room. However, it is not clicky.

I see that BIOS A05 has disappeared from the E6400 downloads.

John

 

Just perfect. LOL

 

Hi everyone

I am receiving a dell 6500 today and will use XP Pro.
Any suggestions on startup to ensure a clean troublefree install?
I assume it will be loaded with norton and all that other crap so i was hoping to get some pointers or please point me in the right direction.
How much ram is useable on this?

Thanks all

 

No Norton, just Dell Controlpoint (which I don't consider bloat, but some people will want to remove some or all of it) Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, a full version of Roxio, and Cyberlink PowerDVD.

That's it. If I weren't using a different version of Vista, I probably wouldn't have formatted it.

Greg

 

Dell advise that the system utility software is installed first.

John

 

Yes, Device Manager. She had me delete all of the 'USB Root Hub' drivers and reboot....the system finds all of your usb devices and reinstalls the drivers.
Mark

by the by...can I give a shout out to John Ratsey for his support of this board? John if you are work at dell you do it well, if you don't you are a saint. Many thanks.