Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge

With these two or 3 people reporting serious problems with the M6400, I feel I have to chime in and be voted. My M6400 Covet has been a rock-solid performer for over a week now since I received it. However, I did not try to download the very latest NVIDIA drivers for my FX3700M; I'm just still using the certified ones published on the Dell website. I never have any problems with starting up or crashing, period. The system is dizzyingly fast and I am simply amazed every time I turn it on.
I have a tricked out Dell Precision T5400 Desktop with twin 15K RPM drives hooked up as RAID 0 with a PERC 5/i controller, and this laptop simply runs circles around it! I'm loading all my master source code and documents onto the Covet now and I'm just going to sell my big T5400 on eBay.
I couln't be happier with the Covet!
Note: I should mention that I did choose to reload Vista from scratch, so I don't have any of the Dell "bloatware" anymore.

 

GLAD to hear that -- My covet arrived last week as well - but unfortunately I won't be home to see it till 12/21. I'm hoping that it is also problem free.

 

Yeah it's always so hard knowing just how bad things are, I guess due to the main amount of people reporting stuff are those with problems.

I know with the Dell's I've had in the past the best thing I did was format on day one, and reinstall windows. I'm sure that sorts out about 75% of the problems.

I do however feel very sorry for the people having to send them back. It's a shame you couldn't get things to work.

Regards,
Simon

 

its interesting that all the problems seem to be coming from 3ds max, considering the machine was created in cooperation with softimage who is now owned by autodesk.

 

Here is the link to the partner certified drivers - yes they are for the desktop cards -- yes -- you will need to get the modded inf to install
them.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/partner_certified_drivers.html

 

i am not familiar at all with modding .inf files, could please point me in the direction of this version or instructions on how to do so?

thanks.

 

A complete discussion - along with all of the already modded inf files -- and how to use them -- as well as lots of versions of the drivers are at:

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/

Hope this helps

 

wow, just sitting here trying to download a driver with no other programs open....the machine just froze and restarted without me touching anything. i must say this entire experience has been a bad one. sorry to keep posting negative things about this but i feel i must post my actual experience since this forum is about this computer.

 

i have a slow connection right now, so i guess i will ask this while i am waiting for the download.....has this driver with modded inf been tested on the m6400 and proven to fix all the issues we are having with 3ds max?

just curious.

 

Don't know -- All I know is that the desktop and laptop drivers are the one and the same -- and that the only difference is the inf file - which is used in the install process.

Since the software developer has certified the driver for use with its products and the NVIDIA cards (all of them) -- then I would assume (maybe incorrectly) that they will at least function appropriately. Guess we will have to wait for you to tell us if they have helped you resolve some of your problems.

I won't know about my problems till I get home on 12/21 -- and get to play with my Covet which is there waiting for me. As I have done with every dell laptop I have ever purchased - I will remove the hard drive - replace it with a new one (in this case an SSD) and load a commercial version of windows and all the drivers from scratch.