New M6500 Discussion Thread

Speak of the devil! My screen just went black after resuming from sleep mode. Had to fly blindly and try to shutdown Windows without seeing anything before restarting again. Why the heck does this happen?

Also, I never bothered about this before but since we are on the topic of weird things that happen to our M6500, mine sounds some very soft quick beeps (I thought it was coming from somewhere else before), whirls the fans to full blast, then drops the fan speed and continue on as if nothing has happened. Has any of you guys experienced this before?

Finally, another annoying thing is that when I run my 640x480 game ( Alpha Kimori? | Alpha Kimori ) in full screen, the M6500 will turn up the brightness four notches and refuse to let me lower it no matter what I try (alt-tabbing out and lowering the brightness and alt-tabbing back in will result in the auto-increase again)! >_<

 

I don't know if this will help, but the M6500 has an ambient light sensor that may be the cause of your brightness automatically adjusting.

There is an option to disable it in the BIOS, as well as a Dell System Manager application which allows you to toggle the switch. At one point I think I saw a native Windows 7 control panel option somewhere that toggles this as well, but I can't think of it now. If it's enabled try disabling it and see if that helps.

 

Well, I installed some OSes that are far from what Dell officially supports, swapped my DVD drive for a third HDD, added another 8GB of RAM and put a sticker above my keyboard that reminds me of the shortcuts to disable the BIOS fan control. Does that already count as "upgrade/modification"?

Indeed I am! As I said, Dells disassembly guide is very good.

Too bad! I'm more a fan of heavy metal.

The screen brightness control is part of the ACPI management, which is partly controlled by the graphics driver. Some software (e.g. many games) circumvents the OS driver control and accesses the graphics driver directly (this is where names like "Direct X" came from) for performance reasons. This might lead to strange effects, especially if the software hasn't been designed to deal with ACPI.

 

That is different from the hangs I have sometimes: mine does not reach the resume step. It seems to halt shortly before or after that point, because sometimes Windows just resumes after that 10s-hold-power-off-button-and-start-again and sometimes I get the Windows resume error screen which asks me if I want to try to resume again or if I want to restart Windows without hibernation info. Retrying resume always worked for me.

I never encountered a black out after the system has booted into the OS.
Actually the disk indicator above the ESC key stays off when my m6500 does not start - at least after I realize the non start behavior the disk light stays black, not sure if it went on between the start and the hang.

Yes, I hear those soft beeps too but it has to be really really quiet around me and the system starts nevertheless.

 

Thanks but that's not the problem. That's another problem which has been discussed here before: Even with the ambient light sensor turned off (Fn + Left), a yellowing tint appears when sun light shines on it.

As for my problem, I already have had my ambient light sensor turned off and there is no change in external lighting at all. The brightness goes up when I switch to my game in fullscreen mode.

 

Oh! I see. 0_0; Is there a way to fix it? ^_^;;;

 

At least it's not just me. *LOL* What's that about?

 

File a bug report for your game and ask for the inclusion of proper ACPI handling.

 

Can anyone tell me where to download the catalyst control centre for the firepro M7820 from. I've tried the ATI website but all I can get hold of are the drivers and download manager??

Also, still wondering about my squeeky key, I'm sure I shouldn't be putting a drop of WD40 into my keyboard?

 

Hi All,

I have just received a M6500 with the Samsung screen and the colours are pretty harsh, can anyone suggest or direct me to some recommended profiles? I could only find the LG ones in this thread.

Many thanks