Windows 7 on Latitude E6400

You guys are welcome.

 

kayless, since you were so awesome in finding the fix for that bug, any idea what causes the repeat rate on the keyboard to slow? the setting isn't wrong when you go into the control panel, but simply moving and reapplying the setting brings it back to normal.

 

That is a Windows bug that was never fixed.
From what I know it occurs in Win2000, XP, Vista, Win7 laptop or desktop...
and maybe other versions of Windows. When Vista was released I thought it would have been fixed, but probably it's the lazy ***-hole that did the copy and past of the view folder setting engine during Vista development, so now in Vista like XP view setting can be lost. From what I see in Win7 RC, they seams to have finally fixed it, so that is good news... but the keyboard.. no fix in RC version of Win7. If you have Win7, I strongly recommend to send a feedback to MS on it, if you want to increase your hope in having it fixed. 1 person is not enough to get attention... but several... that works. I already posted that issue.

 

i really don't care to use the ambient light sensor. thinking it only adjust screen brightness and turn on the back lit keyboard. i choose to not load the driver at this time. is there any drawback to not loading this? i have been running for the last week and the only trouble i have is a flicker in the screen at low brightness levels.

i also choose to not load the dcp utilities. in fact i removed dcp from 1/2 a dozen of e series latitudes over the last couple months.

 

Define flicker? If you mean the screen brightness jumps, then yea, that is what happens. If you have the CCFL backlit for the screen option than that is normal. If it's the image itself, an very subtle and you made SURE that your screen is at 60Hz, than it's ok. Else that that you be a different problem.

Vista/Win7 is NOT like XP. It doesn't slow down the system on more drivers you install (same for system fonts). These days are over. The only difference is that the drivers needs to be loaded when windows boots, of course. Such driver is extremely light and we talk about miliseconds here. Not having the driver makes Windows wonder where the device drivers are, which probably slows down the process, or at least (that I know for sure), prevents from the boot optimization to do a good job. So, in result your not helping by not having these drivers.

DCP is 2 applications, the first is the ultra light on screen notification... trust me these few KB on you 4GB or even 1GB system is smaller than the dust you breath on each intake of air you take. Again, you punish yourself more than helping. Also, this confuses most of your users especially that the keyboard switch mode is 3 modes, and that is confusing to track down. BAD DECISION!

The second application is the stupid one. It's the DCP Panel. That is the heavy one which for some reason likes to startup when windows start, but it's not important one. I removed THAT one from the startup, especially that it can be open any time with Fn+F7 and from the start menu easily.
That panel allows the user to set/edit some keyboard hotkeys, change the backlit setting (backlit duration, turn on by (keyboard only, or mouse & keyboard, and brightness), as well as enable Dell Extended battery life mode (which set the laptop screen to 40Hz, set the system to PowerSaver, disable the firewire port, as well as the optical drive and smart card, set the screen to 16-bit color), by a press of a button.
So again bad decision to not have it installed, but I recommend to remove it from the startup (don't get confused with the on screen notification application)

Now make a 1/2 dozen people happy and enjoy their system instead of bashing how the IT guys can't make something work properly, by installing back the DCP and backlit, and removing the DCP main panel from startup.

If you want a smaller footprint on your system and overall better DCP (however forget about the Dell network/security manager that better supported on the latest version) check out the early versions of DCP: (this is for Vista/Win7 64-bit)
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4924658&postcount=4109

 

first off thanks for the great reply!

1 week old led back lit monitor. The flicker is at low brightness levels only and is very obvious even without looking off the side of the screen. confirmed its running at 60hz.

Great info. i know nothing about vista/win7. We opted to pass on the vista upgrade with all the bad news being spread, so i never even tried it on our pc's. Win7 is geating great reviews, so i decided to test it now. With this information i will load the ambient light sensor.

fantastic! this one i want. i didn't know i could get one without the other.

so your saying i can opt out of this program just by using msconfig to remove it from start up, but still call on it when i we might might want it? this is great info. So will this stop the service from starting as well? do i need to go in dcp and tell it to stop controlling things before taking it out of the start up?

You got me here. I am super busy most of the time and didn't take the time to understand dcp. I migrated users to the first couple machines that came in with dcp and left it running. i poked around it and thought it was neat to have everything in one place. the users contacted the helpdesk with in 2 days complaining about dcp, so i wacked it without trying to understand it. All the machines that followed i whacked dcp during setup/migration. Now that my laptop update showed up with it i guess i will make the time to set it up and understand it. on my nickle it looks like. Once i get it i can teach other users about it. most of our users don't want change. they just want it to work like they are used too. don't get me started on how office 2007 has consumed so much time with helpdesk calls..... and were only upgrading users who request it.

anyways fun stuff. i appreciate you taking the time to help me!

cheers
-low

 

Hmmm.. I have the LG screen on my laptop, and I don't this problem.Well I do have it when I put Latitude background only (I know why but would be a novel to explain it). So I'll others that have a different screen on their laptop, to see what they say, else it might be a sign of bad screen and see to change it.

Bad press doesn't mean bad OS.
Vista is not liked by buisness as it requires new ""powerful"" systems for employees that just word. The cost is not justified. Add to that Microsoft lack of documentation, making IT's configure and not understanding the OS just like XP, and en up screwing up the OS. Add the fact they all install the last minute made 32-bit version of Vista instead of the polished 64-bit version, and to top things over the lack of drivers has every companies decided that that it would be a great idea to make YOU to buy their new products and not supporting their old one, and in some cases (ie: HP, Creative), not even support their latest product and forces you to wait until the new one is release. That was all fixed as they saw the lack of success of Vista, Microsoft push, and bad managerial decision in treating the customer like idiots. All that together makes a mix called failed. Today.. well about when SP1 was released Vista 32/64 was a fine OS for home (as it still required new system for companies (oh and let's not forget training cost)).

Windows 7 is based on Vista, is much more optimized, contain new features that this time people want, deep test it with early public beta's, proper driver support, make a recipe of success as you see now.

Yup! In fact you don't even need to use msconfig.. as his just disables it. just to mention alternatives: you can use software like Everest (unlimited day trial version, but runs on a USB stick so no install needed when you switch between systems), or (freeware) CCleaner (software that clean the registry safely, and empty web browser cache, temp directory and so on).
But msconfig is still fine. Just make sure you disable/remove the correct one.

I never tried disabling the service thus. Something about Vista/Win7 is that prefetch technology now works (unlike XP). So instead of doing all the boot process, scan and load all services, it can take shortcuts by loading some of these items on memory directly (HDD has a backup of the memory of each application that start when windows account loads up, and during boot process (see C:\Windows\Prefetch folder) So, again no worries.

See the idea of XP, was no mater how much RAM you have, it considered you are in low memory and puts everything on the HDD, even an application you JUST minimized. It's that lame. That is why it was said to be abysmal, however the UI was quiet nice and impressed (by average users) that such low resource system could do. In Vista/Win7, as you noticed it's exactly the contrary, it puts everything on the RAM to have super fast response time. Fast memory was never as important under Vista/Win7 than ever before for the average user, for the best most responsive experience.

Oh yea, the good old days. I would still do it, as it they probably won't even notice that the onscreen indicator was not there before. I call it, system update.

 

Hi guyz...

For those who have the "connect fingerprint sensor" issue on windows 7 welcome screen, I resolved it by updating the broadcom driver to windows default driver. To be more specific in device manager find the "broadcom trusted platform module", under the "security devices". right click and choose "update driver software" then click on "browse my computer for driver software" and then click on the "let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer" and finaly choose the "trusted platform module"

good luck for those POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRR guyz like me who were trying to fix this issue....

 

I have a strange problem:
when W7 booted up I can start whatever program I like without problems. But as soon as I try to click in the window or type something, the program(s) freeze(s). I have to close the program(s). If I start them again, I get the same problem.
Only after some time it finally works. This amount of time seems to change and I couldn't figure out any strange behaviour in task manager.
Any ideas?

 

Same issue with Firefox and Thunderbird. I just waited few minutes and the program response again.
And one day, just out of nowhere, it solved itself! Yup! I have no idea how, but it did it. No I did not update Windows since, no I did not update my software.
Now I can't reproduce the problem... this is something I REALLY don't like. I don't know if it's driver related or not.