E6410 Owner's Thread

My E6410 came with Windows 7 32bit, so I asked Dell for the 64bit edition then a few month ago I've done the reimage.. by this time I can't get more than 4.5 hours on 9 cell battery when before the reimaging battery lasted almost 6 hours under same conditions. This is a bit funny and I can't understand the origin of the problem.

So, reading reading previous posts I noticed that many people writing about battery performance don't say if with 32bit or 64bit os..

 

It has nothing to do with the OS itself.
I have 10 hours and half with my E6400 using Win7 64-bit (using the 9-cell battery).
You are missing drivers, and probably also Dell extended battery life power plan. You need to go on Dell web site and get the latest drivers for each component that you have on your system. You can skip security stuff, if you don't use or don't have finger print reader, smart card.

Also, Windows indexes your files and starts a defrag process, which might explain the reduced battery life as well. Leave your computer over night (turned on, so disabled sleep for that moment), and to accelerate the process, you can manually defrag the HDD while doing that.

Also, did you install Windows on battery? because if you did that, you just decalibrated the battery, and needs to be re-calibrated. To do this, have the laptop idle, minimum brightness, wireless ON, on battery and leave the system (not in sleep, so disable that), drain itself to empty. Once there, turn on the system go in the BIOS, and let the battery continue to drain there. Once it turns off, PLUG the battery in, and let the system battery charge to 100%, and turn on the system. Once in Windows, in your account, unpluig the power, wait 5min, idle, minimum brightness, for the battery to adjust itself, and you should be good.

 

Hi, thank for your interesting.. this is the last thing I'm considering, but in fact is the only thing changed. I'm wondering that something is missing but all devices are ok with Dell drivers and DCP is installed (and all others Dell utilities). ACPI shows a power drain of about 16-20W under normal usage.. so the 9 cell battery (now mine have 86Wh max) correctly lasts about 4.5 hours, unlike before.

All drivers installed from dell website except vga but it was the nvidia driver also with 7 32bit. The gpu correctly switches to 135MHz when idle.
The extended battery life power plan come with dell control panel, I have it and I have personalized it like in the previous 32bit install.

I've recalibrated the battery a few weeks ago because the wear level rised at 9%, now is about 7%.

 

Hello all. I had a customer who's docking port on their system board was not working properly. I was going to replace it and ordered a new board. After installing the new board though the computer will overheat very fast, even before I can set up the bios. I have put back the old board and it will also overheat now, although not until I push it by watching youtube video's or something. The fan is working as it will spin faster and faster till it turns itself off from overheating, and I can feel the air being pushed out.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

Be sure the CPU and/or GPU chips are in full thermal contact (use thermal compound and/or copper shims as required) with the heat pipe. Also, remove the fan to clear dust build-up from the inside face of the fan vent heat exchanger.

GK

 

Thank you for the advice. I have replaced the heatsync with a new one using the thermal compound that came with it. I believe I have sufficient contact because it left an indent in the glue with both the CPU and GPU. With this new heatsync the computer seemed to be working fine so I gave it back to the customer. The customer later complained that it turned off again probably from overheating after using it for a few hours. I seem to be getting closer but the problem isn't solved. I'm running diagnostics on it now (from the dell cd provided) any other suggestions?

 

Did/Does the heat sink surface contact the chip surface... or should you have used a copper shim to fill the void?

When it is overheating, is the exhaust air hot? That is, is heat being transferred out?

GK

 

i think i need a recalibration too, that seems like alot of work though

 

i've been using E6410 for nearly a year; and it started to act up about 4 months ago. the temperature of the i5 520M, at idle, is always about 55-60 degree Celcius; at full load (CPU load only, GPU idle) it can rocket up to nearly 95 degree Celcius, very hot bottom and left side but the fan is still very quiet

any solutions? cuz even with a dust-clogged machine, working for about 15 hours a day on a wood desk in a clean environment for nearly a year, I think it's really weird for it to be hot like this

 

OK so it looks like the system was overheating because heatsync was bad, but replacing it seems to have cured that ailment. Now I have another problem! It takes a noticably long time for the bios to pop up. (about 1-3 seconds) This is longer than it takes on any other laptop of the same model I've seen. Before it starts booting windows a message pops up that says "ME FW failed". I'm not sure how this is affecting the computer but some of the software is having problems running (specifically outlook 2010)

My only idea what happened is when I put in a new system board it needed me to update the bios and as it was saving it overheated and turned off. I don't know if this caused it though. Does anyone know what this means or how to fix it? Thank you.