Official M-6862 & M-6864FX owners thread

Yep working fine. I got an antenna off ebay for around $6. I just ran the wire around the open space and taped the antenna to the hard drive cover. Works perfectly now from across the room. (I can sync my phone from across the room now).

 

Hi gecko,

Q1: Which one of the Dell BT's did you use the $10.99 or $9.99 one?

Q2: Can you link it here the eBay Antenna purchase? so, we can get the right one? BTW, is it 2 lead or 3 lead?

Q3: Your thoughts on USB option?

Thanks,

G!

 

They are the same card, just different sticker orientation.

I'll have to look for the ebay listing, but it was just a Foxconn uf.l antenna. I'm not sure what 2, or 3 lead is, but its one plug, and one wire that leads to a board with the copper antenna on it.

I have a USB Bluetooth plug, but I don't like the BlueSoeil drivers that its compatible with. I like the default microsoft ones, but the widcomm ones aren't too bad.

 

Yo gecko,

Don't waste your time looking for the thing ... if it is a foxconn I think I know which one you are talking about.

Thanks!

G!

 

Hey just a quick Q. I undervolted my 6864fx and when it idles around 30C the fan is really loud.. sometimes it will quiet down like its slowing down for a few seconds and then start back up again. Is there a way to make the fan sound quieter? ive already cleaned out the fans for dust etc. THANKS

 

Bought the dell 370 wireless bluetooth mini card and the hitachi mini pci bluetooth antenna. You can find both off ebay. It works great, and the hitachi antenna is easy to fit because it's not as long as other antennas out there so no need to route and run the wires around. I was just using my blueant headset for skype and it works great. The bluetooth card only requires one antenna so you don't need to buy the 2 or 3 piece sets. Here's the link to the antenna I bought on Ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Hitachi-Min...39:1|66:2|65:12|240:1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

If I have the time, I'll take a picture of my installation for you guys.

 

Hi arnrivera,

Great Post ... THANKS for sharing!

G!

 

What exactly is the function of the recovery partition? I mean, it may sound like a stupid question, but having made the recovery CD (or in my case Recovery DVD ) and having the Gateway OS Disc, that the Laptop came with, what purpose does the 15 GB (8 GB used) partition serve.

I'm asking because I'm kind of meticulous about space, and still wanting to put a small linux partition on, while keeping as much room free as possible.

 

so does any1 have a problem of their m-6862 laptop freezing?. like when you closed the lid and leave it for a while to download something and next thing you press power button and every other button but it wouldnt come on. or when watching movies it freeze?. I undervolt my laptop. running on 12x on 1000 vid. but if it bad then it be blue screen of death so i'm thinking it not the undervolting. also this freezing problem happend even b4 the undervolting. also my friend got the same freezing problem once or twice since he got it. but his is stock and he just remove stupid programs that came with it.

Thx for the reply. Oh and gonwk for the info on undervolt and everything. much appreciation. props to whoever got it to .9875 vid cuz i got blue screen of death. so im only stable on 1000

 

If you have all that, then I think the recovery partition is redundant. Feel free to put some Penguin goodness on it.

When you close the lid, does it go into sleep mode? Also, I've noticed that you have to push the power button and hold for a second for it to respond.
Also are you plugging and unpluggin the ac adapter while you are doing this?

 

Yea when i closed the lid, it does goes into sleep. and yes i noticed that i have to push the power button and hold it for a second. It went to sleep b4 when i closed the lid and majority of the time i was able to wake it up with the power button. But this freezing problem happend even when it was on. It happen when i watch Anchorman. Aso i was doing all this while the ac adapter was plug in.

 

So what you're saying is it really doesn't serve any real purpose, after all the backups are made?

I suppose if I really wanted to be safe I could burn the partition to a DVD or 2 and have a back up of the partition or put it on an External HDD, no?

I just hate to delete something that could be potentially helpful in the future, and I want the penguin goodness

 

Yea. the DVDs should just be copies of what's on that partition.

I do old school backup and just periodically ghost my entire HD.

 

Thats not a bad idea but I'm assuming you ghost it to an external HDD which I lack.

When you mean the DVD's should be copies of whats on the partition you mean the back up DVD's that are supposed to be made (I did make them) when you first get the computer?

 

This is driving me nuts. But that hissing/crackling sound from the headphone port is just incredibly loud. I went to best buy and checked the Gateway's that they have, and there is no hissing at all.

Do you guys have a fairly noticeable crackling? It doesn't seem to be connected to anything (HD access, wireless). Its just a constant white noise crackling.

 

I don't really hear any hissing or crackling outside of the very low, normal feedback. Try playing with the plug, pulling the headphone jack alittle or pushing it in alittle more.

Beyond that, I can only suggest is try different sound drivers.

 

I just realized what that whine/hiss/crackling is. Its the processor's whine/hiss/crackling being transmitted over the headphonne jack.

Put your ear close to the center of the keyboard. You might hear a that whine from the processor.

If you don't hear it, then I'm calling gateway for warranty service.

 

I don't hear anything at all when I put my ear to the keyboard.

 

Hi gecko,

Darn ... you have Super sensitive ears! I actually tested my Headphone Jack with small earplugs (but good quality) ... and no Whine or Hiss sound ... However, I did put my ear to the Center of laptop like you asked ... and there is some sort of Sound like something is working (probably like you said ... the CPU) ...

But if it is Bugging the heck out of you ... get hold of Gateway ... might be specific to your laptop.

BTW, what kind of Headsets are you using!?!?

G!

 

Hi folks,

My Gateway M-6862 AC Battery Charger gets awfully warm and even smells like it is getting awfully HOT!!!

Q1: Anybody else feels that their Charger is getting too Hot? Or is it just my Charger?

Q2: For the Gamers ... what do you guys use to bypass the Keyboard? I have gotten this game from a friend "BloodRayne 2" and tapping those keys like mad man ... I am concerned that my Keyboard might go out pretty darn soon. So, can I use something else?

Thanks,

G!

 

When I first got mine, for almost a week I had that really bad. Like over the ASD area it would whine bad. But it mysteriously went away, must've been my mind threatening to take it back lol.

 

A1: Yeah mine usually gets red hot (not literally red but pretty **** hot), and it does smell sometimes like burning.

A2: I use an external usb keyboard. Plug and Play FTW

 

Hi Justin,

Thanks for the reply! I am going to get me an external keyboard then.

I wonder if everyone else has the same experience with the AC Charger ... to me it is unusual ... because I have an old Dell Inspiron 8100 and the AC Charger still going and stays pretty darn cool ... go figure.

G!

 

The charger on my M-152XL does get hot, but I never smell anything burning

 

I tested using Shure e2cs, d-jays, and koss porta pros.
I might have sensitive ears. Not sure if that is a good thing or not, but that noise is just incredibly annoying.
The whine WAS common to intel mobile processors. There are several huge threads in the Dell forums on it, but it seemed to have been resolved recently.

Did you do anything that might have stopped it? Maybe mine is the same thing. I'd rather not send it for warrenty, cause Gateway warrenty is pretty poor.

btw, if anybody is looking for that dell bluetooth adapter, I've got an extra. I was planning on using it on another laptop, but I found the actual adapter for that laptop.

 

I have a M-6862 and I installed XP on it, because I was getting rampant crashes when using ANY torrent program on Vista. Problem immediately went away when I switched to XP.

Well now my hard drive died, and Gateway sent me a new one. I'm about to send the old one back, but I read in this thread that changing OS will void your warranty. If I send back the defective hard drive (which is physically defective), and they test it and notice that I had wiped Vista and installed XP, will they try and charge me for the hard drive they shipped to me?

If so, should I go in and completely wipe that hard drive so that they can't tell I had XP on it? How is it even valid to void a hardware warranty if someone makes a software change?

I am using the generic synaptics pointing drivers for xp from their website, works great... 8.10 catalyst drivers and some random audio driver i found for a different gateway notebook that works well.

About the audio problem. I can hear all the activity that my computer does when I have headphones plugged in to my EMU 0404 USB. I have a Little Dot MK III headphone amp and Grado SR-225s, and when turned up all the way I can clearly hear things like scrolling, opening and closing windows, and pretty much any activity. It sounds like little blips and vibrations, or if the volume is low white noise as others described. Only using the amp was I able to tell that the noise was actually dependent on what I did with the mouse.

When I unplug the notebook from AC power, the problem goes away completely. Some sort of grounding issue probably.

 

Actually I restarted my computer tonite and while booting up the whine seemed to return.

I mean it seems to happen intermediately and possibly more often (can't hear it when I play music ). I mean it definitely happens and stops occasionally. It's like a high pitched sound, but I mean don't most processors (at least in desktops) make some type of sound?

I don't know it's definitely annoying, but if nothings wrong I'll just turn up music and tune it out.

Question on something unrelated: anybody notice harddrive space being eaten by vista?

I mean I think this model come with about 180 gb free when you get it but I would gestimate only putting only tops 20 gigs of stuff on here (if that probably closer to 12 gigs- if that!). I mean the biggest files I've put on here would be like Office 07' and a few games which only add up too about 2 gigs total, and then only little programs (FF, Opera, Chrome, Rocket Dock, Ventrilio, little stuff).

Yet despite all this I only have about 149 GB free, and about a week ago I had about 155 gigs. So I'm thinking something odd may be up

 

The wireless connection for my M-6864FX stopped working all of a sudden. Windows thinks there are no wireless networks available (though there are, I'm connected with another laptop) and asks me to enable my wireless card (which is enabled, with the switch at the left of the laptop and within windows).

Anyone else has had this problem?
What can I do?

Thanks in advance

 

Odd. Try reinstalling/updating the driver?

 

Hi mirinda,

Check out this suggestion ... might help!!!

Why my Wireless connection is not working on my laptop?
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_my_Wireless_connection_is_not_working_on_my_laptop

G!

 

Already did that... didn't work. Windows recognized the wireless card without problem, but it is incapable of detecting any wireless networks, although I'm sitting right next to the router and my other laptop is connected just fine.

 

Thanks for the link
After reading it and doing (yet again ) everything the guide suggests, I can only conclude that my wireless card is busted... I'll try to see if it's anything I can fix myself, if not, well, trying to get support for a US bought laptop over here in Mexico should prove... challenging. I can always contact Gateway Mexico, but I don't think they'll make my warranty valid

See?? I should buy my stuff here and not in the states! lol

I'll post later with the solution I can find. Thanks for the help guys

 

Ok I am officially stupid
There's yet another way to enable/disable the wireless card, besides Enable/Disable with right click and turning on/off with switch:

Fn key + F2

After pressing those, TADA! Wireless is back. And now I remember how it got turned off in the first place... I left my laptop on during the night because I was downloading some large files from college, and wanted to turn the LEDs off, so I *tried* to press Fn key + F1, but insted pressed Fn key + F2, which turns off the wireless card.

Yup I know. Noob indeed :s

At least my faith in Gateway is back hehe

And again, thanks guys for helping

 

Good to know there's both a hardware switch and a software "switch"

 

Hi folks,

@ Miranda ... Glad everything is A-OK!

@ Justin ... I am volunteering you to make a list of all the "Fn Key + ??" and their Functions and post here!

G!

 

I have a M-6862 and I installed XP on it, because I was getting rampant crashes when using ANY torrent program on Vista. Problem immediately went away when I switched to XP.

Well now my hard drive died, and Gateway sent me a new one. I'm about to send the old one back, but I read in this thread that changing OS will void your warranty. If I send back the defective hard drive (which is physically defective), and they test it and notice that I had wiped Vista and installed XP, will they try and charge me for the hard drive they shipped to me?

If so, should I go in and completely wipe that hard drive so that they can't tell I had XP on it? How is it even valid to void a hardware warranty if someone makes a software change?

I am using the generic synaptics pointing drivers for xp from their website, works great... 8.10 catalyst drivers and some random audio driver i found for a different gateway notebook that works well.

About the audio problem. I can hear all the activity that my computer does when I have headphones plugged in to my EMU 0404 USB. I have a Little Dot MK III headphone amp and Grado SR-225s, and when turned up all the way I can clearly hear things like scrolling, opening and closing windows, and pretty much any activity. It sounds like little blips and vibrations, or if the volume is low white noise as others described. Only using the amp was I able to tell that the noise was actually dependent on what I did with the mouse.

When I unplug the notebook from AC power, the problem goes away completely. Some sort of grounding issue probably.

 

I'll take the task you "assigned" (hehe) Justin:
FN key + (see following list of keys) does:
F1 - Turn on/off LEDs in laptop (power LED, Wireless LED, Hard drive LED, etc)
F2 - Turn on/off Wireless card (when you restart your laptop, it will still be off if you turned it off)
F3 - Sleep mode
F4 - Use external display
F6 - Turn on/off bluetooth connection (but M-6864FX has no Bluetooth, so it is pretty much useless)
F8 - Toggle between 3 screen brightness modes (low, medium, high)

The following combinations work with Winamp and Windows Media Player even if they are not the selected/active window, with iTunes only if the window is selected/active
F9 - Play/Pause
F10 - Stop
F11 - Previuos song
F12 - Next song

The following keys are not the F# keys:
Scroll - Lock Numpad keys
Pause - Break
Ins - Print Screen to clipboard
Del - SysRq (not sure what it does... maybe you guys can tell)
Pg Up - Increase volume
Pg Dn - Decrease volume
End - Mute sound
Up arrow - Increase screen brightness
Down arror - Decrease screen brightness

And the following combinations mimic the Number Pad located to the right of a traditional keyboard (if you used Fn + Scroll key to Lock the Number Pad, you won't have to press the Fn key each time you press the keys):
7 - 7
8 - 8
9 - 9
0 - /
u - 4
i - 5
o - 6
p - *
j - 1
k - 2
l - 3
; - -
m - 0
. - .
/ - +

Hope you find this list useful!

 

Hi dihnekis,

It is funny that you should post a problem like this ... after installing XP the Hard Drive going capote! Now that might be a coincidence ... but I could swear I read in another Forum the same comment ... after going from Vista to XP the darn HDD died.

Anyway, I would think if your Hardware Fails ... that is all it matters ... when somebody buys a computer and wants to change the software I assume it is their business ... now the Best Buy Warranty does not cover SOFTWARE or VIRUS caused problems. I have NOT read my Gateway "Limited" one year Warranty ... but I assume Gateway Support should just send you a hard drive for the bad one ... just don't drag your feet and send it out fast and make sure you call them and coordiante the return and get an RMA.

Please post back here with your Experience with Gateway Customer Support ... for others to see if Gateway is hard to get hold of or not!!!

Thanks,

G!

 

Hi Mirinda,

THANKS for the "cheat sheet".

BTW, I can't make what your Avatar is!?!? ... what is it ... is that your Cat on top of your Cabinet!

G!

 

When I told Gateway I was receiving a SMART error as the computer was booting up that was predicting a drive failure soon, the tech started to tell me I had to open my computer up, take the RAM (???) out for 30 minutes, and then contact them again if the problem still existed. I was bewildered, the RAM has nothing to do with SMART predicting a drive failure... it seemed to me like the tech was just trying to get me to go away. I started insisting that I wasn't going to, and that the problem was in the hard drive, because of the very obvious SMART error at boot. At some point the tech goes "Oh, why didn't you say so before, of course you don't need to mess with your RAM, we are just going to replace the hard drive". So I copy-pasted all the previous times in the conversation, including the heading that had my initial description of the problem, where I had referenced the SMART error and the fact it was probably a hard drive problem. The tech just ignored me, but at least sent a hard drive. I'm sending the other one back tomorrow. This one works well so far. Gateway support sucks though.

 

Hi dihnekis,

THANKS for posting back. I was afraid of that ... Gateway Support not so hot! That is why I unwillingly bought the 3 Year Warranty from Best Buy for $129.99 ... just to circumvent this crap.

dihneks ... does your AC Charger run HOT!?!? Just curious ... because mine runs pretty darn HOT ... my DELL's Inspiron 8100 (old laptop) runs very cool (barely warm)!!!

Thanks,

G!

 

Anybody notice any issues with freezing?

It's happened to me quite a few times (I'd say around 5 times in the last two weeks, 4 times in one night and then once tonite)

Sometimes when I unplug the laptop and run it off battery for alittle while and then plug it back in it just locks up completely. Can't move the mouse or anything. I can do stupid little stuff like turning off the leds (FN+F1) but I'm forced to do a hard shut down (hold power button) and boot up again.

Happen to anybody else?

 

Hi Justin,

Didn't you convert to XP or downgraded to Vista 32 or something!?!? If so, did the Freezing started after the change-over!?!?

BTW, I have not experienced the Freezing as of yet!!! Knock on the wood! But then again I have not changed anything on my laptop! So!!!

G!

 

Nope I'm still running the stock Windows Vista 64 bit, safe some bloatware I deleted. But it's kind of annoying to plug the laptop in when the batterys running low and have to restart the thing cause it froze.

Happened again about 10 minutes ago.

Happening to anybody? Any ideas?

 

Hi Justin,

Check your "Settings" under "Power Options" > Advanced Settings > Low Battery & Critical Battery "ACTION NEEDED" ... that might be the cause!

G!

 

Is a cat falling down (apparently surprised or startled) from something that looks like an air conditioning unit... the picture comes from icanhascheezburger[dot]com

 

Happens to me too, though not as often as to you...
My lap freezes sometimes when trying to turn it off by pressing the power button, and it's really annoying.

 

Hi Mirinda,

Any guesses on what is causing your "Freezes"!?!?

G!

 

Not sure what you mean exactly, but i have it set to give me the message at 5% and it'll "do nothing" if the battery gets to low.

Yeah :/

doesn't happen constantly but more then i'd like.

 

Mine has done that maybe 2-3 times in the 3 months I've owned the laptop (in regards to it freezing up once you plug it back into the power adaptor after running it off of battery). Hasn't happened in a while though.

All I can recommend is make sure you install every optional and required update in vista, make sure very little bloat is running on start up, and keep your system running lean. Since doing that, I haven't had this problem occur. And I've actually been taking it off it's desk and power supply a lot more often lately. So sorry I don't have a "real" solution, but it's something that'll hopefully correct itself or be extremely infrequent like w/ me