E6420 Owner's Thread

Are you talking about importing certain restricted by destination goods like laptops? Because Amazon does not ship such to Israel and when I asked why, they replied that it is restricted by my country's import policy or something.

You mentioned that consumer is protected in US. You were talking about consumer protection laws? Something like 30 day returns and such? We also have something similar in 14 days returns but such law has its own restrictions like item must be not used at all. That's silly because how can I try or like item if I cannot return it after using it?

What happens in US in case seller deceives customer or refuse to take back item other wants to return? What for customer to do in such case? Sue seller in court by hiring lawyer or complain to consumer protection agency that helps resolve issue?

Then you must know about proper cooling of E6420 and probably suggest thermal compound, thermal pads and give some directions to person like me who never had experience with such? Here's thread I have opened.

 

It is mainly an issue when shipping the notebook batteries by air without proper protection. Other than that, there are only a few hardware export restrictions regarding smart card readers, fingerprint readers, and some encryption technologies. Of course, there are also the software restrictions, but that can be discussed and addressed privately.

Yes, there is the federal consumer protection agency, which is part of the federal trade commission, in addition to state agencies that protect the consumers here in the USA. In California, we have local, state and federal business registrations and license that must be maintained and there are options for consumers to report poor businesses to these entities. A popular choice is the better business bureau. Regardless, it is rare an individual sues a company when solutions that benefit both parties are much cheaper than a court room. With that said, there are a lot of class action lawsuits and those can generate a lot of money for the lawyers and some (small) compensation for the class action members. In the end, only the attorneys get rich.

At any rate, the best offense in dealing with Dell or any other service option is making sure you have done your homework and do not allow yourself to be taken advantage of or cheated. If you know the process and they know you know, then everything often goes well and the diplomacy pays off. My number one rule is be respectful and understand they are paid to do a job. Too often we take advantage of people instead of appreciating and making them feel they are valued - even if we may not agree with them or feel they should do more for us.

OK, time for some sleep here, but hopefully I have helped address your concerns. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to PM or email me. This is a community of forum members who should help each other out when needed and spread the knowledge so we can all enjoy our hobby and these toys we call computers, notebooks, pc's, boat anchors, paper weights, and sometimes annoyances.

Scott-

PS: I will look at your thread in the morning, but yes, the E6420 does well with some good thermal paste and 0.5 to 1.0mm copper shims under the heatsink.

 

Hi,

I have Purchased this lovely laptop everything amazing! however I have a 6Gbps SSD inside but its Only reading at 300mbps Which I think are SATA-II Speeds, Any ideas people ?

Thanks
Riki

 

there was a problem with some Intel chipsets not actually working at 3Gbp/s
Intel Resumes Shipping of Faulty Sandy Bridge Chip - Slashdot

I'm not sure if the E6420 was affected

 

Is this a NVIDIA graphics failure on the E6420?
I have had a quad core E6420 for about 2 years. 8GB RAM. Windows 7.
Woke the other morning and screens were black and fan blowing hard. Was using it in dock with U3011 monitor.
After forced shutdown (I had tried to get screens to wake first, and to put it into Hibernate via keyboard shortcuts) the screens remained black.
Tried reseating memory, removing battery/power and BIOS battery to reset BIOS. No change. Even BIOS screens do not appear.
Fan blows hot after a short time of trying to boot.
Then I discovered that if I plug the monitor into the VGA port it works.
Ran diagnostics - no failure apart from not being able to see anything unless I use the Fn-F8 shortcut to put the display on the external monitor.
No clue in event log. Device Manager looks fine.
I did a clean install of NVIDIA graphics drivers to no avail.
My suspicion is that Intel graphics is working but either NIVIDIA graphics is not or some part of the data flow to the Intel screen and docking port is broken.
Issue remains. Any suggestion of what to do next? How easy to repair?

 

It does sound like something's gone bad.. if the GPU chip has fried it could be drawing a lot of power and all the heat is causing the fans to run at full speed.

I don't have my E6420 any more. Can you check the settings in the BIOS and disable Optimus altogether?
Before you do fiddle with the settings, do be sure you know how to do a BIOS/CMOS reset from power on in case that breaks video altogether.

 

Thanks speculatrix...

As far as I can see, to reset BIOS to defaults I would have to guess the right time to provide BIOS and System password, hit F2, then Alt-F. Anyway I will try and verify that before I actually try disabling Optimus. If I remember correctly, I saw some kind of flow diagram at one time which showed even Intel graphics signals flowing through the NVIDIA graphics... my guess is the VGA port might be an exception.

Incidentally (and not related to the problem) the Dell Support site says there is a new version of the BIOS out (A08) apparently released 3/7/2014 ... only according to my notes I installed A08 a long time ago.. so I am rather confused (unless my move to the Middle East has changed the date the driver was released).
Or perhaps there is a special back-doored version for people here??
[I searched for all Driver updates - it didn't scan my machine to get that result]

 

oops, sorry, wrong thread.

 

Has anyone attempted an Ivy Bridge upgrade. I managed to score an E6420 for about $375 (Core i5, Quadro, 4GB RAM). My intention is to upgrade to a Core i7 and if Ivy Bridge can be done, then I might go for that.

 

Are you talking about swapping the CPU? Or CPU/motherboard? I don't think either can be done....at least not between generations.