New M6500 Discussion Thread

I had no problems with 3 generations of Dell machines before I got the Dell Alienware M15x which gave me lots of problems. Of course, it was just the minority that got the problems but it sure felt like the majority to me. I nearly went for a HP or Toshiba but their customer service was crap and Dell's customer service and tech support are excellent. They offered me a discount on the M6500 for all the trouble I went through with my Alienware M15x and I have never looked back since. My M6500 is just great and it has been traveling across the globe with me without major problems! ^_^

 

For those of you with M6500 machines freezing unexpectedly, I wanted to post a follow up with my Dell Support experience.

I called Dell Support to pursue the "lead" that a memory issue was the culpret (as posted in earlier posts in this thread). I too was getting sudden unexpected freezes, with mouse frozen, keyboard frozen, hard drive disc light flickering, and the only way to fix was to press and hold power button to force hard reset. This would happen about 2 - 4 times a month and I use this computer every weekday, all day.

I have Dell Gold Support and they were very prompt and helpful. I've bashed Dell Support in the past but in this instance i found my tech to be very professional, knowledgable and 'lets get down to fixing it' without mundain pre-test BS stuff, i.e., the 30 min of "lets rule out the obvious...is it plugged in" BS.

I told the tech about what I had read about the memory issue. He immediately told me Dell is aware of a memory issue (a good start!) and he had me google and install a program called "CPUID" which I did. This is a neat little unility program that will tell you the manufacturer of the memory and a bunch of other stuff to "ID" what your processor is, memory amount and speed, etc.

When I did this, I told the tech I had two Samsung 4 gig cards and two Elpida 2 gig cards for a total of 12 gig. The tech told me that the memory issue is related to a defectively manufactured line of cards limited to one manufacturer (I forget the name, but it was posted earlier in this thread i think). He was perplexed on what to do because he told me "we ship out Samsung and Elpida as replacements, and you already have these manufacturers".

The tech then told me my SSDs have a firmware upgrade "to increase performance" but that my drives would be ERASED during the firmware upgrade. Uh.... He intervened: 'I dont know what that means by performance increase" and i opined "well, I am going to guess that does not mean it eliminates freeze-ups or i think it would have said that - - or at least that would be in your notes".

I asked the tech to swap out the memory, so we could try that first, before i was required to format my hard drives via a firmware update! he put me on hold to ask a supervisor, and came back and agreed to swap the memory.

The memory came the next day and it was Samsung and Elpida - exact replacements. The box was marked "refurbished". Whatever (good luck getting actual 'new' parts). I am typing this on the M6500 with the new memory installed.

SO..... thats my story. In my simple mind, I hope it was one of my memory simms because the symptoms were exact as the others... but... apparently I did 'not' have the memory manufactured by the problem company.

Ill assume its fixed unless it happens again, and at that point i guess i will need to do the SSD firmware upgrade.

I hope this helps others.

Adam

 

Thought it was just me, and trying to prove a crash a week is so hard.

Glad i'm not alone

 

I had the same issue happen once when I first got the M6500. However, I swapped out my RAM for Kingston RAM the next day after I got the machine. I've noticed that the issue has never happened more than once. Maybe that issue definitely is related to the RAM. I agree with your tech support experience though in that sometimes you get a person who really knows what is happening. Better keep their extension for a rainy day. I am just really curious if the diagnostic program showed the RAM as passing the tests, but the techs said that it still could be bad?

 

M6500 Freezing momentarily / Blue Screens / Crashing Completely

Just a reminder there's an extensive thread about these issues on the Dell Forums here.

The CSR I spoke just this week to told me this is an "isolated issue" because they've received very few complaints; but I suspect the issue is greater than anyone realises, just that most people experiencing problems aren't reporting it, or think it's "just them".

Sorry to repeat myself, but this thread is pretty long now, and I know a lot of people are only reading the last few posts. Hope this helps

 

If this is happening with all the memory manufacturers it could be a design defect. Dell designs the memory specification. The memory vendors build to spec. That's why there are several manufacturers all building to spec. Thats what the tech told me. But if the spec is wrong......

I hope it was just a buggy memory SIMM.

 

Thanks for that link. I'll join that thread! Had not seen it b

 

Hi
I'm in the same boat too.
I get temporary freezes several times a day (everything is frozen but the hard disk light says it is working, back to life after a one to four minutes delay, no info in the system logs).
I get freezes which need power off one to two times a week (no info in the system logs, of course any work is lost).
Very irritating. Thought it was a software problem during a long time.
Will call the techs one of these days (I need to find time to deal with that).
Thanks

 

I have been watching this thread after getting a new m6500 and experiencing the USB BSOD issues. I now have a new no video issue. This m6500 is looking to be more like a lemon everyday. This one was built in late September with 4 gig ram and Nvidea video.

I was wondering if anyone else has seen this condition.

On booting up today the internal LCD stayed dark but system would boot up fine. After connecting an external monitor the system booted fine but the internal LCD was no longer in the device list. Odd...so I made sure the display cables didn't unplug - they live under keyboard and hinge cover - all OK.

Using the boot video test I booted using the Power button and keyboard "d" key and the internal video diag ran OK and I could see the test pattern on the internal LCD. Good - the panel is OK. I chatted with dell support via dell site and they want to replace the motherboard now - arghhhh.

I work at a large company so I am going to try to get them to exchange this unit for a new build as I feel the replacement motherboard and the onsite tech will probably make it worse and still not solve the problem and I will still have the USB crash. I have seen onsite techs break more than they fix and would rather ship it back then deal with multiple visits wasting valuable time.

I will let you all know what happens with this new issue.

 

If you're having BSODs and have an nVidia GPU, try disabling PowerMizer using NVidia PowerMizer Manager. I did this 2 weeks ago, and haven't had a single problem since (before that I had BSODs every 1-2 days).