E6420 Owner's Thread

When I said Dell will just grab any old SSD from their parts bin, I mean brand. They will all be SATA 3 but you might end up with a crappy, slow brand - its the luck of the draw. At least if you spec it with HDD and buy your own SSD you know what you're getting & it will most likely work out cheaper.


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This year, every SSD I've seen in a new system has been either a Samsung 830 or a LiteOn something or other that's basically a rebadged Plextor, which uses the same Marvell controller as the M4 (if memory serves correctly).


I've had a few refurbs that still have the Samsung 470, which I found outperformed the LiteOn in general use, as benchmarks showed a higher random speed.

 

Just picked up a E6420 and noticed something strange. Every once and awhile my system will just crash and power off. It does not seem it overheats and no blue screens.

Has anyone had something like this happen before?

 

Yep. A few months ago it would power off for no reason while on. The battery was not loose and it powered back up no problem. This hasn't happened for a while though.

I have a Force GT SSD and thought it may be related to that though I suspected it was so random that it was something with the Dell itself.

 

piker28: Try a memtest, seems like a stability problems with RAMs.
Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

 

I haven't read these forums in about six months so just did a mammoth catch-up!

At the time the 1600x900 panel did show a picture but there was something obviously wrong with it and it wasn't usable so I went back to the 1336x768 it came with.

I didn't do the LVDS upgrade because at the time I couldn't find the part number to search for the cable. However, during the aforementioned mammoth catch-up, I see that someone has listed a part number that has come up with a supplier of "pulled parts" selling some.

I still have the screen I bought so I'm tempted to get the cable, although at $20 + international shipping it'll work out at about half the price of the panel!

I'm not going to have time to attempt this until August but I'll report back if I give it a go.

 

Just for information. Used my e6420 with external monitor (DVI with converter cable) Was disappointed, because it never allow me to see anything on external monitor before Windows 7 logon screen. Disable Optimus in BIOS and got full hdmi/dvi support starting from power on

 

I have a question: I just bought a 6420 from Dell Outlet with a 128Gb Liteon SSD. The hard drive access light flashes constantly. Aside from being annoying (it's a bright white light that is very hard to miss while looking at the display), I'm concerned that my SSD is being accessed so frequently. In other places I've read about some things that could cause this and tried some fixes (e.g. something about the DVD writer) and though it might be a little less frequent, is still there.

Should I be concerned? If so, what can/should I do? Or should I just apply a small piece of tape to the light and move on? Thanks.

 

As its new this is normal for the first few days as Windows is indexing files for search & possibly downloading updates. It should settle down soon.


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Thanks Cowboy - I thought that too, but my laptop is fully updated and indexing, even if its not complete, is now turned off. The activity light is still flashing away. Any other ideas?