Has anyone used the 6400/6500 with a docking station??

Im having a big problem.
My laptop's fan WILL NOT turn off. Its spinning at blow dryer speeds all the time.
Initially I thought I had a lemon with some heat issues, so I returned it and DELL sent me a new one. I received it today and it has the same problem as the one before.

Apparently this laptop runs super hot when in the docking station-the reason being, I have no clue.

Its driving me nuts and im worried that the internals are going to overheat cuz this fan is blowing out really hot air.

When I use it on the go or anywhere outside of the docking station-no fan problems.

Any ideas?

Would hate to lose my docking station/external monitor...

 

My fan is non stop as well. However, mine is blowing cool air. My guess is its by design. I'm returning this one and going with E4200 soon though.

 

I belive my 6400 used the fan very much the first day. The first night I updated the bios (from A03 to A05) and now the fan is on high speed only a couple of times per day.

I am not sure it was the bios upgrade that helped but I think so.

 

my fan was kind of going crazy too. i usually download the dell fan utility for greater control over my laptops fan.

 

You should know that the fan in my E4200 runs pretty much constantly, even when idle. The bottom of the notebook itself is barely warm and no heat can be felt through the keyboard, so odds are that Dell will throttle it back with a future BIOS revision.

 

well, only reason I want E4200 is because E6400 is too heavy with extended battery. I will have to live with fan problem.

Which date did u order E4200 and which date did it arrive?

 

My fan doesnt stop and the base of my computer gets scolding hot.
Im worried that the internals are gonna fry.

This is definitely a dock issue; the dock is not allowing the air to dissipate properly. I now know two other people with this exact problem.

This a monster DELL screw-up.

 

I have the same problem. When my E6400 is in the dockingstation the fan is running all the time.

Now ist the BIOS-Version A06 available. Has anyone tried, if a BIOS-Update to A06 does solve the problem?

 

i have the E-Port with the M2400. i dont see how the docking station could block any fans or air vents .... nothing unusual with the CPU fan, its off almost all the time.

 

I ordered it the morning it was released in the US 9/16/2008. The scheduled ship date was 10/15/2008 with delivery on 10/16/2008 (Next Day). The system actually shipped a few days early on 10/9/2008 and was delivered on 10/10/2008.

It's also worth mentioning that I've had more than my share of problems with the E4200, so if you don't like the idea of possibly having techs replace parts of your brand new notebook, or having to wait a month or two for BIOS releases to fix glitchy behavior, then you may want to consider waiting until they stabilize a bit...