New M6500 Discussion Thread

Good day guys, hope you can help me.
I have a M6500 with FX3800M graphics card. Today I encountered some problem. Every time I start with my AC plug the screen goes black just after windows 7 start. But if I turn it on in battery mode there is no problem. Evrytime I plug my AC adaptor the screen turns to black and I have to force shutdown. Anybody experience this in their M6500. Thanks in advance.

An update of what I have done so far;

1. updated the following, bios, chipset, nvdia drivers
2. run diagnostics, no error found.
3. remove some start up programs, java, acrobat

The windows 7 now will occasionally boot in AC without the black screen, but as soon as I open Firefox or IE it will crash to a black screen.
If I boot windows 7 in battery mode everything work alright, even if I open Firefox or IE.

 

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone can help me sort out why a bluetooth mouse just refuses to work with my m6500. I got it to work once, when I first bought the mouse. No problem - worked like a charm.

But ever since rebooting from the original install, it doesn't recognize the BT mouse. In "Mouse Properties", if I select the Bluetooth tab, it sees the device, but shows the status as "Disconnected/Standby". When I click "Connect", the add device dialog sees the mouse, and allows me to re-connect to it. But it still shows "Disconnected/Standby" in mouse properties.

When I click the BT taksbar icon, it sees the mouse. When I double-click the mouse icon in "Devices", it brings up a Microsoft dashboard, where there is an option to "Configure the mouse". But when I click on that, I get a dialog saying "Unable to connect to the Synaptics Pointing Device Driver". That dialog goes on to offer me the option of removing the Synaptics Driver from the system entirely, i.e. to use a different one.

I started to follow the "remove the synaptics driver" route, but quickly realized it was going to disable the touchpad, which I don't want. I need the touchpad to keep working in addition to the external BT mouse, so I don't think this is the right thing to do. I chickened out and aborted the driver removal process.

Anyone know what's going on? This worked once, but hasn't worked since...

Thanks,
xPat

 

Hi,

I think I know the answer, since it happened to me 4 times (got my 5th graphics card now).
Let DELL change the graphics card and everything will be fine (at least for a while).

It was the same every time: my system started to produce black screens now and then. And at the end every start of IE crashed the system.
After insisting on an exchange of the graphics card the system was ok (...for a few weeks or months till the story started all over).

After 9 (or 10?) service calls in 18 months I'm sick of it. There won't be another repair. I'm ready for escalation to 2nd level service and will insist on a new system (and of course NO M6500). Usually I am a friendly and calm person - but this notebook cost me 16 working days over all (the last repair lasted 7 days) and this starts to make me angry...

Cheers,
Alex

 

Have fun with Tier 2. They don't really like to answer the phones when you call and they always call back when you are busy. Horrible communication skills they got and all they will do is give you a refurbished M6600 that is probably poorly-specced and not in good condition.

Just to give you a fair warning from a guy in the same boat with you right now...

 

Wow... I get scared every time I see one of these posts. I have had a FANTASIC experience with my m6500 so far, but that almost seems unusual reading this thread.

I am EXTREMELY dependant on my m6500 - so much that I'm almost tempted to replace it just out of fear that I'll be the next guy to start experiencing mega problems. Is there a pattern here? Is it only certain high-end CPUs that have these problems, or is it the whole m6500 line? I mean I just couldn't tolerate the kind of issues you guys are having...

I hope it gets better for you guys, and I'll cross my fingers and knock on wood in hopes whatever is afflicting your systems isn't contagious!

xPat

 

Thanks Alex, you're right it has to be the graphics card.
I uninstalled the NVIDIA driver and let the generic windows 7 driver run the card. So far no more crashes (black screen) , but this also disable the external monitor and no windows aero. BTW, I also tried both Dell and NVIDIA drivers but both crashed the system once I started using IE or Firefox in A/C mode. Which really is confusing, because in battery mode, the system dont crash.

Im a HP8730W user before I upgraded to M6500. The only reason I didn't upgrade to HP8740W is because the processor I want is not yet offered in the HP8740W. My HP8730W also has problems, mostly the display panel, but none in the motherboard. I also find HP support much better than Dell.

 

Hi, I had a lots of problems like you with my M6500; at the end thei will change my pc with a M6600.
I advise you to insist for a swap.
I don't know where are you from, but in Italy they have an obligation to change your product after the same problem appears over 3 times. I think if in Europe must be the same.

 

It seems like my recent black screen problems were caused by my newly bought joystick (Logitech Attack 3). After I received it I usually had it connected to the combined eSATA/USB port and at that time my screen started to go black once in a while (not often enough to clearly blame the joystick). Since I've disconnected the joystick I had no further black screens.

 

If the solution is to use only slots A and B, why don't you use 2x8go ram modules?

 

Actually, with only two module I cannot manage to obtain memtest to return errors in any combination, but the system is still freezing, apparently randomly.
Today I swapped two 4G 1333 modules in slots A and B for two 4G 1066 modules.
Weirdly, the BIOS still claims memory speed to be 1333, even though it should be impossible, right?
I couldn't manage to get any 'explicit' memory error yet, and it didn't freeze yet... but even with the two other modules it looked fine for a while, I'll stress the system as much as possible give you updates in case there will be any!

Any other ideas? The freezes i'm having now are: frozen image on the screen, sound looping over a sound frame, nothing works including magic sysreq keys, so it's not the kind of freeze 'we' are used to have from nvidia drivers/boards.

Thank you very much!