Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

Since I already installed the 213 driver without doing a "clean install" what steps would I need to take now to wipe these out and do the clean install? I am guessing it might mean deleting the trackpad in device manager, and then when Windows prompts to install a new device I should point to the 213 driver, but this is just a guess. Device Manager shows two installed devices under "Mice and Other Pointing Devices"--Dell Touchpad and HID-compliant mouse. Do I delete both of these devices? Am I completely off-base, and there are completely different steps I should take to do a clean install of the driver?

Thanks very much for the assistance.

 

To reinstall the driver, simply go into the Control Panel and Add/Remove Programs. Dell touchpad is listed there.

The reinstall 213, and if the problem persists, try the following:

- Type "regedit" in the Start menu search box, and open the program.
- Click on the little arrow next to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
- Click on the little arrow next to SOFTWARE
- Click on the little arrow next to ALPS
- Click on the word "Apoint"
- Scroll to the bottom of the right pane in the window.
- Double-click on "UseCustomGUI", and change the value from 1 to 0.

Minimize, but do not close the registry.
- Open the Control Panel, click on "Mouse".
- Go to the "Gestures" tab
- Check that there is nothing selected for each of the 4 corners of the touchpad.

If there is, make sure you change it to do nothing. Then you can either close the mouse properties, or keep on messing with the mouse settings, there are a lot more there than in the Dell Touchpad panel.

Make sure that you reverse the change you made in the registry back to "1" once you are finished in the mouse properties.

Greg

 

Thanks for the detailed instructions.

I followed them, but I can still get the CTRL key functionality by lightly touching the lower left portion of the touchpad. I guess I will let Dell know, and hope for a new driver release.

I can't imagine no one else is experiencing this problem, however.

Anyone?

 

I installed the rev 213, so far so good. I'm thinking since the left side of the touchpad actually translates into zooming, which is ctrl + arrow keys commands. Probably can try disabling zooming on the touchpad settings, the problem might go away. I've disabled mine.

 

So far I'm thinking that my BSOD's have been related to Roxio, and I just got a couple of updates for it.

I'll post if I have any more of them.

Greg

 

I see there is an updated version of Dell controlPoint System Manager

Update to Dell ControlPoint System Manager.

Has anyone tried it? It might fix the CPU throttling problem.

John

PS: I have installed this update. It does not fix the CPU throtting which occurs when using a 65W PSU.

 

I updated to it as well, but I wasn't having any ControlPoint related problems.

Greg

 

I got my E6400 today! It was ordered on 18/10, dispatched on 20/10 and delivered on 22/10.

It didn't have an OS so I installed Vista Business. I was astonished when it took only 20 minutes! The last time I tried installing Vista was on my Acer Aspire when I upgraded from XP to Vista. That lasted 6 hours and it kept me awake until 3 at night!

So what I've got is this :
P8400
4 GB RAM
120 GB 7200 RPM Hitachi
1440*900 LG Philips monitor
NVidia NVS 160M
Integrated webcam and mic
Backlit keyboard
9 cell battery
90 W slim power supply (DA90PE0 model) - I'd expected the usual brick but this suprised me pleasantly.
BIOS version A06

My thoughts on the E6400

The chassis and casing seem to be well put together but the computer doesn't feel like a tank like some other recent business laptops. But then maybe that's the compromise that needed to be made for lightness.

The screen is very nice and I don't see any defects. Apparently the LGP screen is the one to have and I'm happy to have just that.

DCP software seems to be quite poorly made. It crashes randomly, looks poorly finished and isn't very ergonomic. I'm not quite sure how some functions are supposed to work. The sub-modules for the display and power are even worse. E.g. The function of some icons/buttons isn't clear - if it says activate, it's not clear whether it means that the device is enabled/active or clicking on the button will enable/activate it. Mind you, mine's in French and it might be a case of "lost in translation". If that's really the case, it's even worse!

I'm happy to report a battery life of over 5 hours on the very first day of usage using the Dell reccomended profile. My expectations have been completely met.

The one problem that's very irritating is with the audio driver. It mixes up the various input devices such as microphones randomly. I could be talking on skype when my correspondant suddenly reports hearing nothing from my side. Then there's the problem of breaking sound. This is a system-wide occurence - the sound gets broken randomly in any application. This seems to happen for various reasons like rolling over an app with the cursor or some app producing a sound, etc. An interesting thing I've noticed in the E6400 is that the headphone and line-in ports are controlled by software and it's possible to have different settings for the speakers and a headphone. It's also possible to define a line-in connected device as a speaker or microphone, etc. The feature is nice but the software to do all this is poorly made.

I've not noticed any problems with the touchpad or the keyboard. The keyboard tactile feel is good and it's fairly quiet but I wish it were even quieter. The Alps touchpad is a bit slow to respond but some fiddling with it's controls seems to help significantly. I particularly like the circular scrolling feature.

The webcam is quite good and worth the extra money. The integrated mic is good too but controlling it via the audio driver software is annoying.

On the whole, I'm quite happy with the E6400. I had considered buying an XPS 1330 but now I'm glad I bought this instead.

 

Congrats on the new laptop! But I'm perplexed on how you didn't get an operating system with it. I thought all builds force you to have an operating system...

 

Uninstalling the audio driver and scanning for plug and play hardware in the device manager will install the default Vista audio driver, which works better than the Dell one. That will solve your audio problems.

Greg