New M6500 Discussion Thread

you did install the bluetooth driver - right ?

I thought my M6500 was toothless as well as I was expecting to find the module somewhere else within its innards and not behind the screen bezel, anyways I too saw the bluetooth indicator illuminated upon boot and thought "what the hey", if it cant find the hardware during install no harm done.

Light stays on all the time now

 

@Stephen B,

No, I wasn't aware that I needed to install a driver. I used the Dell Win7 pre-install, and would have thought that drivers for all hardware present on the system would have been installed automatically.

Your comment implies that I need to install the driver before it will work, so I'll go look for it on the Dell drivers site I guess. If you have a link, please advise.

Thanks,
xPat

 

its listed as a 365 bluetooth driver on the M6500 downloads page, its an odd one because device manager does not list it in hardware device list even though it was physically present, I simply tried a leap of faith and it worked

 

Thanks, StephenB. This solved my problem and it would have taken me a long time to find this solution on my own.

This blows my mind. I got my system from the outlet, but these things cost $5k plus brand new. And for that when you buy a Bluetooth-enabled laptop from Dell, what you get is a laptop that has hardware but no software to operate it, no hint from device manager that there is a device for which a driver is needed, and a Dell-sponsored forum/knowledgebase that includes an article with pictures telling you to determine whether BT hardware is present by looking inside the UNDERside of the unit to see if a Dell 370 module is in the UWB slot!

Can anyone tell me just how the heck Joe Q. Public who doesn't know how to take a laptop apart or search online forums for a lead on a device driver - how is that guy supposed to get the bluetooth functionality he just paid Dell $5k for? Does everyone who buys an m6500 have to go through this learning process in order to get an external Bluetooth mouse to work?

So much for the adage that you get what you pay for!

xPat

p.s. The MS BT Mouse still doesn't work, but at least the system recognizes and connects to it now, even if it doesn't accept cursor position input from it.

 

Has anyone had luck configuring a Bluetooth Mouse with the m6500, and getting it to work automatically on restart?

I got a nice MS Bluetooth mouse, and if you go through all the dialogs and control panel panes and so forth to get it turned on and working, it's a great accessory to the m6500. But I can't seem to set it up so it keeps working. Each time I power down, it disables itself, and I have to go through the whole bluetooth control panel rigamarole each time to get it working. The result is I don't bother.

Anyone know how to get a BT mouse to keep working on each power cycle?

Thanks,
xPat

 

Would anyone know if there's any way to tell if a dell refurb m6500 has usb3.0? I want to buy one with a 640m processor, and one is available - and with the screen I want - buuut it doesn't mention whether it's usb3 or not...just wondering if maybe like the 640m's always had usb 3 or something...

 

It should since the 640M came out after March of 2010 and all M6500's made after March came with USB 3.0 standard.

 

thanks!

(had to enter more to get it to post)

 

I've been searching but haven't found an answer yet, so I thought I'd ask here: has anyone found a definitive fix for the "random black screen" issue? So far, I've had the mobo replaced (twice) and the GPU replaced. I've reinstalled Windows, reintalled my graphics drivers a TON of times, and nothing seems to fix the issue. I even sent it in to Dell's depot and they replaced the motherboard.

They are sending me a replacement system, but I have very little faith that the issue won't crop up on that unit if it's an M6500.

So...is there a fix to the black screen issue? Also, while I'm thinking about it, is there a way to tell WHICH driver is causing the issue? I assume it's a driver conflict that's causing things to go all wonky, and a blue screen reader won't work because it's not actually BSODing.

Thanks!

 

Are you referring to a resume from hibernate/suspend type thing? I used to have those types of issues happen relatively frequently when I first picked up my 6500, but being as I stay pretty up to date with drivers from nVidia's own site, the frequency with which that happens has all but gone away at this point. I'm on 280.26 at the moment, but I can't remember seeing a black screen for a couple of revisions going back now.

Just to be clear, when I did used to see it a lot, it was post resume from hiber/suspend. Sometimes re-sleeping the unit and rewaking it would resolve the issue, sometimes not. Sometimes I would see a flash of the screen before it went black (and unrecoverable), sometimes not. Switching display outputs using my docking station or the DP++ output on the side of the chassis had no effect.