Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge

Gotcha, I had somehow not seen the "details" option (hence I had just posted the M6400 config page
They are charging $65 extra over the normal AC adapter

 

Has anyone had any serious problems when docked to the E-port plus dock specially made for the M6400 by Dell? Within 1-15 minutes of docking my cores ramp up to 100% and don't come down until a reboot even after removing from the dock.

Also I am experiencing alot of hiccups in the sound and video. I have clean installed my vista 64-bit many times and installed the drivers in the prescribed order.

I have spent hours with the Dell pro tech support, and after all the tests and diagnostics, even a motherboard replacement they have no idea what is going on.

Thanks in adavnce for any help/advice.

 

docking: no problem here, but I dock while machine is asleep
sound: I had stuttering on startup and all over the place until I installed the latest drivers from IDT's site (not sure I remember where, check this thread) and totally removed all dell controlpoint software.

 

The outlet seems to go from full to empty with no pattern that I can descern. I just saw there's only like 8 m6400s. When I shopped it there was 5 pages totalling 40 some machines. Looked for 'orange' and 'burnt orange' and it said none available. But if you pick one that doesn't specify 'silver' as the color, at least in my case came with the orange case and the Covet specs. I got basically the same machine except for two 320s instead of the 160GB drives, the three year complete care protection with a 20% discount on all outlet laptops that week and ended up totalling a few bucks under $2500 including shipping and NJ sales tax. But I haven't seen as many up there since and I check frequently. Hell I may buy another if I can get the same deal again. I'm also shopping the Lenovo site for a new w700, another high wow factor machine from what I've seen and heard.

 

Basically no problem with dockning, except that graphics fails about once every two months. A reboot fixes it so no biggie.

And just like dma I've had sounds stuttering at startup. A clean install without any Dell software took care of that tho.

Sleep mode mess things up for me enough not to use it at all which kinda sucks. Used to never turn the old laptop off. If I put this one to sleep it often fails once I start it up again. Just random lockups etc. Biggest thing tho is that it normally cant shut down after sleep. Or rather, I usually give up after an hour.

Im running Vista64 as well.

 

Had the same issue. I found what the problem is.
The order in which you install the drivers and software.
On a clean install...
You MUST install the chipset drivers FIRST. Before you install the Intel Matrix Raid drivers.
I had do re-install the OS and the first thing I did was the chipset drivers. Reboot... then go on with the rest. I installed version 9 for both chipset and raid.

 

Actually, the Dell System Software must be installed FIRST.
The chipset drivers must be installed SECOND.
The Matrix Storage Software must be installed THIRD.
And after that, the rest of the drivers installed in the order outlined in Dell's ReImage Guide.

 

Anyone uses bluetooth headset with this computer?
I have a S9-HD and paired with the 410 fine but after about an average of 5 minutes of use, the bluetooth adapter in the computer acted like it felt off the face of the planet. The only way for the computer to recognize the headset again is to reboot the computer. And the cycle begins again.
Please advise how to fix.
On the side note, the Dell bluetooth mouse works fine (no interuption or disconnect).
EDIT: I went in device manager, power management and turned 'allow windows to turn device off' off and it seems to take care of the problem for me so far.

 

Does anyone have any idea on how well the M6400 will support future Intel CPU's? For example, from what I have read, Intel is suppose to be introducing the Calpella platform later this year, will the M6400 be able to support the new Clarksfield processors?

If the M6400 only supports the current platform, Montevina, does anyone think Intel will release a more powerful version of the quad core extreme processor later on?

 

Where you able to fine a solution to this? Same issue with my M6400 - Reinstalled everything. Worked fine for a couple of days then..."Press F1 to search again, or F2 to enter setup". Hitting F1 will get me into Vista with no problem...but this is annoying.