Dell New Fingerprint Reader Owner's Must Read. Broadcom USH Issue effecting Preciosn M4400, M6400, Latitude E6400 and others

Have you tried waiting for around a minute before trying to swipe?

I have the same problem on both my E4300 and E6410, so I never swipe immediately after resuming. I'm still forced to enter the password occasionally, but it's much less frequent.

 

yes I've tried that.

most of the time it will just not work.

if i login with the password then disable/enable it in device manager and logout and try it it works perfectly.

this is pretty bad for an expensive workstation.

dell needs to release updated drivers to fix this.

I'm extremely upset.

does the FIPS scanner work better?

should I see if I can get dell to replace the swipe one with the FIPS scanner?

 

I have this problem occasionally, but certainly not 50% of the time. More like 2% of the time maybe.

I would check that "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" is unchecked in the power management tab of the Generic USB Hub Properties to which the finger print reader is connected.

When I do have this issue restarting the Windows Biometric Service resolves the problem for me. While it is still not ideal, it is less time consuming than a reboot.

 

i tried finding that option for the biometric device itself but it wasn't available.

I'll try it on the generic USB hub.

 

it didn't work.

put my computer to sleep.

woke it up and it failed to scan my finger.

 

You are?

Heck, for years the fingerprint reader would not work at all in Windows 7 (well, other than through that brain-dead Wave suite Dell shipped with those machines, but no real Windows support at all). Good luck with getting an update out of Dell for this...

 

Does your finger print reader have the most recent firmware? The R309311 update package from dell contains a program named ushupgrade.exe which will update the firmware of the finger print reader. Not sure how much it will help but it probably can't hurt. I have seen posts on the dell support forums that indicate flashing the firmware, even if the the version is the same have resolved issues for some.

 

that was one of the first things i tried.

didn't change anything.

 

The only other laptop I have with a fingerprint reader, apart from the M6600, is a Sony. The Sony's FP system works flawlessly, whereas the Dell's is just appallingly bad. It is actually embarrassing to get out your laptop when other people are around and try to use it. I now just log in with my password. For a computer of this quality, I am not impressed at all, which is a shame because the computer is great apart from that!

 

FYI - Dell released new Sroadcom UHS drivers today & the release notes are full of fixes relating to issues resuming from sleep states. It also includes updated firmware and a WMI driver.