New M6500 Discussion Thread

Maybe you have two different problems and this is why it is so hard to diagnose even for an advanced user like you.

Simple questions :
- same problem when running windows or linux?
- nothing special in the event viewer of windows?
- everything is updated? (drivers, firmware, etc)

I did not notice before but last month Dell posted a new bios : A07.

The changelog is :

 

This is happening to me also, right now. It's getting bad now. I can't figure it out... done all the usual tricks. I'll unplug & run off battery power for a while & see if that helps... and stop using the eSATA plug.. but this is not a solution. Have the new BIOS & vid drivers too but, no dice...

Any more ideas?

 

I believe both of you are using windows 7, right? I'm pretty sure it's linked to the graphic card. Since the new versions of IE and Firefox, graphic card is used for acceleration and I got more crashes.

Try to run linux instead of windows and see if your problem still happens. If it's not the case then it's driver related. If it is, then you have a serious hardware issue.

 

Yes I am using Windows 7- 32bit. I also believe its the graphic card, but what puzzles me is if its the graphics card it shouldn't be working in any power mode. When I boot in A/C power. I get the black screen after windows log on, but if I boot in battery power, no black screen. And as soon as I plug the power adapter it crashes into a black screen.

 

Win 7 64. Same here with the power thing. I was crash-free after running off battery, but when it was about to run dry I plugged it in... crash followed soon after.

I've taken out the 2x2GB Crucial RAM sticks I had in slots A&B and relocated the 2x4GB HYNIX RAM there, just out of curiosity. Someone mentioned either the HYNIX brand or having more than 8GB being problematic, so we'll see.

 

None of you answered truly to my question.

Does it work with a live distribution of linux or does it crash too? It seems to crash very quickly when plugged to power so you will know for sure.

Both of you do not have the problem since a long time, so something has changed and makes it crash.

 

Yeah I think I'm gonna draw the line @ messing around w/ Linux to QC this thing. Been playing around with rearranging the RAM sticks and all configurations crash. So far only battery power keeps it stable. Got a ticket open w/ Dell now

Warranty expires at the end of this month, it's just typical that it'd start acting up now..

Not sure why the HDD light spins for minutes on end after a reboot... that's new

 

A stupid question : is UEFI available? If not, why?

 

Update on my display crashing to a black screen in AC power.
I updated my adobe flash driver with the latest Nov 11, 2011 security update and reinstall the NVIDIA driver. And now the black screen crash is gone, even in AC mode and even if Im running firefox and IE. I hope its a software problem and not a hardware problem. Will observe in the next 7 days as I already scheduled a motherboard and graphics card replacement.

Update after 10 minutes, it crash again, after running graphics intensive applications simultaneously.

 

Thx for the update. I have had the RAM & both datacards replaced by onsite tech, and today I received a new power supply. They thought maybe since it doesn't crash when on Battery power it could be the AC adaptor. Black Screen Freeze Crash is still happening. Now they are replacing the MoBo/RAM a 2nd time, but with parts from a different manufacturer. Probably won't be here til at least Tuesday.

Tech support is about out of ideas. They had me disable Speed Step in BIOS to no avail. Not sure where to go from here.