Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge *Part 2*

... And my CCFL 1200p WUXGA screen is unusually dark. I haven't used this screen before, since I just got the screen assembly. I don't think this is drivers related, since at the bios page it is still dark.

Of course I made sure in the bios and the setting that it is at full brightness. I mean it is so dark that it makes white browser pages look rather ivory color...

Frustrating.. Anyone fixed this issue? Is it because this is 1 CCFL screen? (My M4400 with dual CCFL screen is much brighter)

 

Does anyone have pros and cons on updating to Windows 8? I've been running Vista forever, and it's gotten to the point that I *have* to upgrade the OS. I was wondering if upgrading to Win 8 was asking for too much trouble and I just need to stick to Win 7, or if my old M6400 could handle Win8.

(and yes, I accidentally posted this in the 4600 thread earlier )

 

I had the M4400 too, and I was surprised when you mentioned the M6400 had 1CCFL.

This thread shows that there's a 2CCFL screen for the M6400:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...ion/318313-m6400-rbg-e2e-2ccfl-700-worth.html

It might also be possible that the CCFL tube in your screen is faulty.

 

There is only one connector for the CCFL backlight. With the old M4400 2 CCFL, there was two for 2 lights. My M6400 only has one for 1 CCFL backlight.

How would I know if the tube is faulty?

 

I don't have an answer for you, I haven't been here in a very long time and have an M6400 with the qx9300 quad core, the Nvidea quadro 3700 and two drives, a small SSD running my main OS (XP Pro) but installed the Vista Business on a 60GB partition of the big drive and only use it for some big programs I don't use much and my flight sims and a couple of CAD programs I use more often. So I don't use Vista much but it's all up to date and while not nearly as horrible as reputed it's still nowhere near as fast as my XP install and wondered if you have any long time user advice on anything that might speed the thing up? I'm not using the highest video settings (the aero thing or what ever it is) but it's not stripped of all it's little eye candy stuff. Do you have any suggestions? Again, I'm not even complaining, I don't think there's anything wrong with it but it's not near as snappy as the XP (and yes I realize the SSD speeds up XP but I also have a 160GB 7200rpm disk I use to clone copies to, and even running that XP is still much faster than the 7200rpm partition Vista's on. Thanks in advance to anyone that knows Vista better than I. I also ran one of the Windows 7 pre release trials for a year and don't see it as anything different than a slightly jazzed up version of Vista. I might be a bit stupid but I couldn't rationalize the high cost of upgrading to 7 after the year trial was up, since it's not my primary OS to begin with. I'll probably stick with XP till it doesn't work online anymore or something cause in my peasant level knowledge my 3.5GB XP install will always be trimmer than the 14 plus GBs both 7 and Vista take.

 

I haven't been here in so long I forget how to post stuff correctly but I have the M6400 Covet with the qx9300 processor and the fx 3700, two drives 64GB Samsung SLC SSD and a 500GB Hitachi regular spinner and have two questions I'd appreciate any help or advice anyone might offer. I used to come here daily and forgot all about it but do remember I got lots of good advice (I'm a semi-literate computo wize). The thing came in a RAID configuration in BIOS and is there any easy way to switch it to ACHI? I don't even know what the difference is but all the SSD education I have says set it to ACHI but it's solid blue screen when I try it and I'd prefer not to have to reinstall the two different OSs I have on the two drives if possible. And second question is can I put a more powerful or fast or whatever set of fans in it? I'm a temprature freak and even though everything runs within safety margins, have never had an 'event' over the heat, use a Zalman pad (maybe I could up the HP of those fans?) but I still get antsy when I watch the temps. soar to near 80 Centigrade when it's working pretty hard and if computers are like all other machinery lower temps equals longer life. But maybe I'm wrong there. Advice anyone?

 

AHCI and Raid is not interchangeable as far as I know. If you get a OS on the drive with one setting, you have to redo the OS if you want to change.

AHCI is beneficial if you are running HDD AND SSD. It helps HDD be more efficient in reading and helps with the speed.

Are you using both SSD as boot drives? Then you are stuck with Raid mode. Honestly, if you are using the 500GB for storage, the real difference is minimal, since you have that SSD for solid speed.

 

I am experiencing strange issue with my M6400 in the past 5-6 days. It started to shut down without any warning, regardless of what application is running, even when idle.
In BIOS Power log, there is a record of ASF2 Force Off and in Windows logs there is a critical error log stating that system does not shut down properly.
Google is usually helpful, but not in this case. I found few references of the same problem happening on Dell E6XXX machines but with no apparent solution. Some suggested to disable WWAN in BIOS which I did but it did not solve my problem

Strange thing is that in the Safe mode with networking it seems to run OK, which leads me to believe that it is a driver issue with some peripheral device. I tried to roll back windows update prior the point when it started to happen but with it did not help.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,
Roman

 

Well...you have 2 consecutive posts here that encompass a few problems in my opinion:

1. You previously stated you have 2 drives. If you have an active partition on the second HDD...you probably shouldn't be in a raid config.
2. Here is a link to another thread on here that will give you basic info on how to switch to AHCI to maximize your SSD performance....http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...-switch-irrt-ahci-mode-e6400-e6500-vista.html. (disclaimer...not sure if this applies to M64000..but it should as most dell latitude/precision BIOS setup are basically the same).
3. In your previous post you were asking about speeding up your vista install. First go into system config and disable all start-up processes listed (you don't need them to run at start-up for a stable system > run-msconfig>uncheck all boxes except virus protection autorun and anything else you really want to auto start.). Next...check out this link which is a fairly good guide to disabling unnecessary processes in Windows OS versions. Note: heed the author's warnings, and read through carefully before disabling anything if you aren't really sure what you're doing. (Black Viper’s Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Service Configurations | Black Viper | www.blackviper.com)
4. The stock fans your M6400 came with are sufficient to cool all approved CPU/GPU configs available in the Laptop. (according to Dell engineers). If you're really concerned about the temps you're seeing in your unit, then do some research about repasting. Use the available dell teardown manuals, and reapply the TIM to your CPU and GPU. While the system is disassembled, clean the fans and heatsink assemblies. This will definitely make an improvement to an older system's thermals.

 

I am going to make a guess here: I would definitely test RAM to see if it's working properly (use Memtest86 or something similar; just not the built in one). Second, check the temperatures of your components and inlet, outlet vents of your computer. It may all be a simple case of overheating.