Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge, Part 2

The display hinges are very loose on my E6400 to the point of severely affecting usability. I tightened the hinge screws as much as I could but that didn't seem to help much, if at all. What else can I do?

Just to be clear, the hinge screws are the ones that are accessible without popping off the plastic hinge covers, correct? There are other screws visible once the hinge covers come off and I've tightened them too, but that didn't seem to affect anything either.

 

By loose, do you mean when opening and closing the display?

The screws you are talking about is only for holding the hinges with the chassis. So tightening those screws won't affect the "stiffness" of display opening and closing. And if I understand correctly, your display lacks such stiffness right?

If so, I think the only way is to replace the hinges entirely.
Dell Latitude E6400 LCD Cover Left Right Hinges New | eBay

I guess you could use pliers to "adjust" but they are pretty cheap anyways.

 

Yeah, that's what I am talking about.

This laptop is bleeding me dry. $50 for a new 6-cell, $8 (and then $55) for new chargers and now $12 for frickin' hinges etc. Well I guess can't complain too much because it has lasted me 4 years, heh.

 

Well... The battery 6 cell with under 20% wear level shouldn't have costed more than $20 used on Ebay. Charger, you can get for $10-15 for sure.

So THAT was your problem! You could have gotten yourself entirely new E6400 with the right bidding.

In regards to the hinges, they probably wore out. I am assuming you witnessed the issue gradually, unless you dropped it or something.

 

For the loose hinges problem, you have a few screws to tight up.
You have the ones at the bottom, that you saw and tightening.
But you also have the gray cover.. those hold the gray cover and also the hinge. They are 2 screws, if I remember correctly also, under the plastic frame of the monitor. Remove the frame following the instruction from Dell service manual (it uses snaps, so don't pull if its still, you might break them), and tight those up. See if it helps. If not, then you need to replace those hinges. I think the early revision of the laptop had this issue, Dell was fairly quickly to resolve. I guess you fell onto one of them.

 

anyone know if the motherboard from the M4400 fit in the E6400..??

 

No, the but the motherboard from the M2400 will. The M4400 shares the E6500 chassis.

 

Has anyone here done the conversion? Or a DIY guide on actually doing a CCFL to LED conversion?

 

The parts you have to buy are different depending on which lid, screen, and cables you currently have. If you don't want to deal with that stuff, just buy an entire display assembly and that'll definitely be a straightforward drop-in replacement.

 

So i have a problem. For some reason the internet on this laptop (only this laptop) has severely decreased. Went from 20 mbps to 1 mbps. So i'd like to try updating the drivers, but none of them on the page work. Using the 1510 half height card. I have windows 7 64 bit. In addition, if that doesnt work, can I buy a new wireless card? If so, which one and where? Thanks a ton!