New M6500 Discussion Thread

you may want to clean the vents or re paste the CPU. the max i saw on mine running prime 95 was 70c if i overclock all cores to 3.0ghz and then run prime the max i saw was 80c after i repaste the CPU. and put a shim on the chipset

here is my idle temps

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Hey all, thanks for your feedback with my DVD issues. I actually have a tech coming out later this week to swap out the motherboard on this thing, and who knows, maybe that'll fix my fingerprint issues as well??? Interestingly, the DVD burner works just fine if it's plugged into my eSATA port. I'll let everyone know what happens on Friday. In the meantime, I guess I'll play with overclocking since I'll be getting a new board and everything in a couple of days...

 

That is strange. 78°C is pretty hot, but far from being critical. I had mine running stable at 90°C.
So I guess either the temperature readings are incorrect, or the event that triggered the high temperature routine was not the temperature itself.

 

Starting to think there was some random desktop clutter obstructing the rear vents. So by time of the reboot & CPUID running it had cooled down to those figures. Currently the cores are around 58-60 just browsing web here. Not sure why Speedys is cooler, I guess his paste trick.

Just got this thing last week brand spanking new, so don't want to go messing with the CPU paste if I can help it.

 

What are the specs in your M6500 evil???

 

Hey debguy...I see you're using the bpo kernel with lenny. Do your multimedia keys on the m6500 work?

 

Umm... multimedia what?
If you refer to the volume keys above the numpad, yes they work. And I did nothing to make them work.
But if you mean keys to start and control a media player, I have no idea what you're talking about.

btw: I'm running Gnome. Maybe other DEs have trouble with that. Especially Xfce and LXDE are prone to it. So if your wattOS installation has some troubles with that you'll need to add some asound commands to your acpi scripts.

 

follow up regarding the above...

A new tech came out to examine the wifi problem that began after the first tech left... As mentioned above, the first tech disassembled the laptop (ie. mother board, daughter board were removed along with the display and video card and heat sinks) to replace the aluminum housing which was warped and to also replace the palm rest/trackpad.

The new tech removed the daughter board to better examine the wifi switch that is located on the side of the laptop. He found that the plastic slide engagement mechanism had broken off inside. Presumably this happened when the first tech had come out to do his other repairs. FYI, even without that switch working we could still engage the wifi by unchecking a setting within the BIOS so that the wifi is not enabled/disabled by the physical switch. Anyway, the 2nd tech replaced that switch and all was good and well again.

All was good and well.... untill two days later. The trackpad quit responding again. The pointer stick was still working though. This was the same issue I've had since I've obtained this laptop back in March. The only remedy is to reboot and then it magically begins working again. I've reformated and reinstalled numerous times with no effect. I've tried all of synaptics drivers and also the default Microsoft driver. We've replaced the palmrest.

And then on seperate occaisions, unrelated to the trackpad issue, the screen would shut off. The laptop wasn't shutting down, just the display. This would happen sometimes when I'd bring up a new application. As soon as I click to open a new app the screen would shutoff. Again, this has been happening since the beginning at random since I've owned the laptop.

Both of these issues have been VERY troubling, especially while I'm working with a business client and at the most inopportune time... the screen goes blank and I have to reboot, loose all of my connections, can't save my current work, etc. very very bad! lol. And especially not good considering the price of this awesome piece of technology. The trackpad failing to work was simply frustrating but at least I could continue work using the pointer stick.

So I contacted my Dell Support Rep (same support person I've been using since my first call to them). I explained the issues that I was still having and I asked if I could please simply be given a new machine so that my business won't be impacted anymore. Initially they replied that they wanted to send a 3rd tech out to replace the motherboard and display instead of replacing the whole machine. But after a few hours I received an email from them saying they will send me a new machine after all. yay!

so, in about 7 - 10 days I should be receiving a new m6500, I presume it will have my original specs which would be XP (bahh, why did I go with that OS initially!?) two SSDs, 4gb, 920XM, slot dvd burner, etc.

When I get the new machine I'll ofcourse see how it is setup before I proceed to set it up same as my original. Then I'll need to:

- perform one more system drive backup image and data drive backup image from the old machine.

- install the additional aftermarket memory modules from the original laptop to the new for 12GB total

- set AHCI in the SATA settings of the BIOS on the new machine (usually DELL ships these with SATA set to RAID for some reason, even if you didn't order your machine with a RAID configuration). I need it set to AHCI for TRIM to be functional for my SSDs.

- enable VT settings in the BIOS so that I can run XP Mode

- reinstall Win7 Ultimate 64 or reimage the system drive from my Win7 backup image (i use acronis btw). I would much rather prefer to use the reimage so I don't have to reinstall everything again... or maybe I'll first simply try using my original system drive to see what happens (maybe all these problems are software related?!... in which case I will see the same problems I was having before if I reuse my orignal SSDs). *REINSTALLing from scratch on the new drive would probably be the best idea vs. doing a reimage from a backup but that takes so much time! lol

- reimage the new SSD data drive D: from my data backup image. FYI, I keep seperate image backups files, one for each drive (system drive image and data drive image)... or, maybe I'll first try to simply install my original data drive.​

I trust all of my problems will solved at that point

I wonder if I'll get the USB 3.0 daughter board. That would be a nice and very cool surprise! I had a first run model covet before the USB 3.0 was a standard feature.


Anyway, do you think it was the motherboard that was causing all this grief? video card? Loose connections? software driver incompatibility perhaps? SSDs causing system to freak out? I wasn't wanting to have them replace and analyze each possible piece of hardware hopeing that eventually it would be fixed. I'm really really hopeing that these issues I was having will be resolved with the new laptop and were not from a software problem because my plan is to set it up the same exact way as it was previously. I think I just had a lemon , considering the alum housing was originally warped when I received it. Maybe it was dropped or damaged during assembly (the shipping box was fine).

I'll post more after I get the new machine up and running.

Thanks,

ben

 

Wow, what an ugly story!
However, if all your problems arise from hardware malfunctions you should have the same problems under every OS. So maybe you should just run a Linux or OpenSolaris Live-CD for some time and see what happens. If this works fine it's very likely to be a software problem, which means that restoring your system backup will give you the same problems on the new machine.

 

Just the volume keys....okay, thanks

btw, gnome no problem, OB/LXDE no prob, XFCE=Problem I'm using Peppermint Ice (LXDE)