Nothing but problems with my 6400:

Go to the Control Panel (Start -> Control Panel) and double click on the entry 'System'. (If you don't see it you might have to click 'Show classic Control Panel' or something like that.)
In the window that opens, the link at the top left should be 'Device Manager'. Click it. Click on the small '+' at the entry 'Sound, Video and Game Controllers'.
Right-click the IDT audio and click uninstall. And you're done!

Edit: Speedy, you really are what your name suggests

 

I had the same problem for my E6400, with IDT hogging 50% of the CPU!!! Disabled the IDT audio High Def Codec and am using whatever residual audio driver is left (after reboot). Music seems to play ok (using 3% of the CPU instead). Thanks!!

 

I just restarted my computer and it seems to have automatically downloaded the IDT driver again.
Is that ok?
Or do I have to uninstall again? (and how do I stop it from automatically updating that driver)

 

I believe there is an updated IDT driver from the Dell website that fixes the issue of using 50% cpu. But I use the vista drivers, so I may be wrong.

 

When you uninstall the driver, there should be a checkbox to delete the driver as well. Did you check it?

Greg

 

Are you running Vista64? If you load the audio driver from the Dell website, you should be fine. Don't load the one that Windows Update recommends.

As for the battery life, 2 hours is what you get. From the M6400 owners thread, I think some people are speculating that the "desktop" chipset that the M6400 uses is most likely the culprit. The good news is that if you crank the power setting to High Performance, the battery life does not get appreciably worse, about 1 hour 35 min.

 

I am pretty sure he is talking about the Latitude E6400 and he should be getting better battery life than this with the E6400. I would suspect the IDT driver/resource issue will also improve his battery life.

 

didnt know I should I delete it-will do that now.
Thanks Greg.

EDIT: i deleted it and now my computer is telling me that I have no Audio??
What is my computer supposed to use for sound if I just deleted the Audio driver?

 

Go into the Device manager again, and this time click on the last icon in the bar on the top of the window. It looks like a computer with a magnifying glass. It will scan your computer for new hardware.

Greg

 

I stand corrected; when I first unstalled IDT and rebooted, the computer seemed to be fine (there is sound and the CPU is not running at > 50% at idle). After a few days however, the problem resurfaced and I realized, just like another poster above, that IDT was reinstalled automatically somehow? Anyway, have now updated the driver from Dell and [knock on wood], the problem seems to be ok.

On a related note, when at the Dell download site (entered using the service key of the laptop), the site identified like 25 "reommended" updates. But when I ran Windows Update, nothing else needed to be updated.

1. Do I really need to download all the stuff "recommended" on the Dell site?
2. Some of them seem to relate to the same thing (i.e. DCP) but one would be "driver" and one would be "application". Wouldn't my computer already have the "application", in which case I should only download the "driver"?
3. How updated is the Dell "recommended" list; and I mean in relation to my computer. For example, under BIOS, it lists A011 as an update, but from the boot screen when I turn the computer on, it appears that the computer already runs A011? I don't want to download stuff I already have, simply because Dell's "recommended" list has not caught up to the currency of the actual drivers on the computer?

Thanks v. much (in advance) for your help!