Precision M4400 Owner's Lounge *Part 2*

Just had the same display driver problem - black screen, white screen, CPU @ 100%... so I've installed the later driver that someone mentioned here was OK, see what happens.

It may be that this video card isn't up to what I put it thru 24/7

 

And just as a follow-up, my WUXGA (LED) back lighting problem (going all white on power up and when Win7 went to sleep) had to do with the LCD panel itself.
New panel installed, problem gone. Hopefully, this might help someone else.

 

So I finally got the Precision M4400 I have been wanting for a long time, and it’s everything I thought and knew it could be! This machine even came with the backlit keyboard and webcam!

So a few upgrades to make:
• 8GB DDR2 1066 RAM
• 256 or larger SSD (I will probably put the new SSD in the T410 and move the one there to here)
• Quad core CPU or the fastest P series I can find. Although I think the ability to run 4 threads would just be insanely awesome.
• 1440x900 Resolution LCD
• Copper mods for VRAM

I thought the E6500 with a Samsung 840 PRO was fast. I was wrong. This machine blows it out of the water. It was having some overheating issues which I solved by removing the fan and heat sink. Then I blew out all the fan blades and cooler fins which removed a lot of dust. I then applied a fresh coating of Arctic Silver 5 to the CPU and GPU and put the machine back together.

So here are my current specs:
• Core2Duo P8600 @ 2.4GHz
• 4GB DDR2 800MHz RAM
• 512MB Nvidia NVS 770M
• 128GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD
• Dual layer DVD-RW
• 1280x1024 LCD

Regarding the backlit keyboard: It is slightly “mushier” than the non backlit version but that’s fine with me. It took all of 5 minutes to adjust to the feel of this keyboard and I can actually type better on it than on my Thinkpad T410. I think this is because it is a larger keyboard and gives me some more room to work with so my hands aren’t cramped together. I will give it a few more days of testing but this could become my new main rig, even with the slightly heavier weight over the T410. Dell did a remarkable job with this computer and even though it is a few years out of date, it has handled everything I have thrown at it with aplomb. So far I have run furmark for 30 minutes with no problems, played a few flash games on facebook, watched some 1020P content on youtube as well as some HD content from the hard disk. After cleaning the cooling system, the system appears to be very stable. I will of course be doing more stress testing in the coming days ahead to ensure that the machine is performing as designed. If it does (and I suspect it will) continue to remain this stable, then I may have just found my next main laptop. Which is saying a lot because while I go through a few laptops looking for the “one” to hold me over for a few years, that one machine is about to go through hell. It had better perform upto par.

 

So a bit of an update on my M4400:
I completely re-did the cooling system. Removed the fan and heat sink, cleaned everything thoroughly and blew out all the fan grills and laptop internals. I am not idling between 37-42 degrees celsius and the GPU is idling in the low 40’s as well. This laptop is very powerful for a C2D based system. Now I understand more about why the M4400 is so highly praised. Finally I have a powerful machine with a great LCD that is actually big enough to work on. So now I am debating on the CPU itself. I am torn between upgrading to the fastest P series CPU I can get my hands on or a Q9200 with its awesome 12MB of L2 cache. This machine even games better than my Thinkpad T410 with it’s Nvidia GPU. Maybe it’s the larger amount of VRAM or whatever. All I know is my FPS stay in the mid 50’s to low 60’s compared to the mid 40’s to low 50’s for the T410.

UPDATE: I solved the driver problem with the Nvidia GPU I was having. Basically if I used the stock Dell driver, everything worked great. However if I updated to the latest driver, the machine would BSOD on a consistently regular basis. After a lot of googling and looking around I learned that the latest stable version that works with Windows 7 64-Bit is the 285.62 version. While out of date, it is still newer than the stock version which was reporting as 189.xx. I have done some stress testing with Furmark and youtube and the system appears to be nice and stable. Also with current driver it was reported that the GPU clock would stay locked at 500MHz and not clock down to save power when needed. My system clocks down just fine using the 285.62 drivers, so I am not too sure about why it wasn’t working for other people.

 

Here's a question that I do need help with:

I keep getting an error about a USB device not being recognized. It only started happening in the last few days. The only device I have plugged in is my 8GB SD Card that I use to hold my work documents, stuff for my blog, and so on. All devices in device manager show no issues, minus the one saying not recognized. I can't view the hardware id's for the device it is talking about. I took my 16GB USB Flash drive and plugged it into every port and copied a 1.4GB movie from it to my SSD and everything was nice and smooth on each USB port.

Thoughts?

 

There are two ways to install latest nVidia drivers on an M4400 that I know of:

• Use the PowerMizer Switch method from https://forums.geforce.com/default/...-770m-296-35-bluescreen/post/3776941/#3776941
• Install the latest GeForce drivers instead of Quadro drivers as suggested later in that thread: didn't try this yet myself. This doesn't need the PowerMizer steps but you may get a different performance profile than the Quadro driver

Good luck and enjoy the M4400!

 

Yeah, I already got the driver issue sorted as I mentioned above. But thanks for the info anyway.

What I could use help with is the USB device that isn't recognized.

 

RIght, but using a very old driver is not a perfect solution. I was telling you and other M4400 owners how to use current drivers.

BTW, it looks like the latest (340.52) Quadro driver also has the fix so that you can use it as is (no PowerMizer Switch work-around) -- I tried it on the hope that the same fix in GeForce 337 made it into the Quadro driver and no blue screens yet!

 

I just tried that driver and it blue screened on me. But really, I am happy with the version I was running.

Could use some help with the USB issue I am having though.

 

Is it the Broadcom USH? I recently encountered an M4400 where that had presumably gone bad, and it was perpetually giving me a USB device malfunction error...