e6500 crackling audio

Seems most of the folks who have audio problems have the Dell 1510 WiFi card. I have the Intel 5300 and do not have audio or latency problems (in XP at least). Perhaps you should have them exchange the WiFi adapter.

 

I have Intel 5100 and I have this problem, so don't change to that, at least.

 

I have the Intel 5300 wifi card and I still get occasional audio skipping.

@nofxfan - Do you have the nVidia Quadro NVS 160M GPU by any chance? In addition to using the 8.2.2.1001 matrix storage driver, I also had to roll back to the Standard VGA graphics driver from Microsoft. I'm not suggesting this as a permanent fix, but only to let you know that applying both of these changes eliminated the audio skipping in my system. I ended up switching back to the nVidia driver to utilize the extra functionality it offers. I noticed there is a new nVidia driver on the Dell site, so I'll have to experiment with that over the weekend.

My OS is Vista Ultimate 32 bit.

 

because no one replyed to this, i quote it, as i'm interested too... is there anyone who run linux on the e6500? how does the audio work?

 

No crackling audio problems in Linux what so ever. It's beautiful!

 

thank you ndawg25

[little ot]
do you have any problem or does everything work great?
what about the backlit keyboard? Is there any way to enable/disable it under linux?
[/little ot]

 

Just checking in. Still fighting this thing, though it's tolerable now with skips about every minute or so.

However, I made the mistake of downloading the latest video driver from Dell yesterday. Not sure what the deal was, but after updating the driver my external monitor would not come back on after going into power saving mode. only way I could get it back on was to reboot. I tried changing video settings with no luck. Also, my control panel menu went from icons to a list and I can't figure out how to get the classic view icons back. I'm guessing these two problems are somehow related. I did roll back the video driver and that fixed the display power saving mode problem, but did not restore my control panel. I'm hating Dell and Microsoft more and more everyday! Anyway, I mention this because I updated in the hopes it might have some effect on the sound issue and thought I should warn others of other possible problems.

 

I have an e6500 vista x64, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 5300 wlan, 410BT, nvidia 160NVS. I have the static problem. Rolled back to the 8.2 intel drive and have to say the matter has improved greatly. Far from resolved but it has helped.

I have also disable A and B in the wifi properties but have not bothered with the IRRT or DVD Disabling. I may test those today but after downgrading to the 8.2 Intel matrix drive the static is much less pronounced.

edit: I would like to add that I did work with Dell on this and their only remedy was to reinstall the IDT Driver. I couldn't reboot at the time so I was not able to follow up with the support rep. I am going to callback and let them know about the success I had with the recommendations I learned on here.

 

well I have spent nearly 2 hours on the phone with Dell to no avail. We disabled the speedstep, then disabled speedstep and wlan and bluetooth, the reenabled speedstep and left wlan and BT disabled and reenabled speedstep. Well this went on back and forth for some time with long pregnant pauses between each step.

End result in my opinion the best results thus far for me has been the rollback of the Intel MSM to 8.2.2. The aforementioned steps carried by Dell today offered little to no improvement and if anything only added to the static issue.

Not sure if anyone else has noticed this but with my headphone on and no music or video playing I can hear a faint Geiger counter like sound when moving the mouse around. I first noticed this when adjusting the windows volume slider and again later when i had all the windows minimized and was moving the mouse. Not certain if they are related but I did notice that this background noise appeared to cease with the wlan disabled in the bios.

As of now the case remains open. I told them about the success I have experienced with the Intel MSM rollback but the kat I was working with didn't seem to want to hear anything about it so the tip may have fallen on deaf ears.

I did ask to speak with the Dell CSR afterwards and they are emailing me a coupon for $50.00 USD off my next purchase.

I really appreciate the tip on the Intel driver situation and hope the rest of you find some relief from this nonsense. I have about 15 days remaining before I can RMA this thing but not sure if I will do it.

The E6500 IMHO is a great laptop but has a minor design flaw that unfortunately really stands out.

Best Regards,

Update: Dell Called back and stated they would credit my CC 50 dollars as a coupon would not immediately be available.

 

If you care to diagnose this problem, follow the directions in this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=341918

when you can figure out which of the drivers is causing the problem, contact Dell support to complain and give data. Complaining in this forum does not generate any leverage; contacting Dell may feel very indirect but at least it's something.