Received m6400 today but it's nothing but trouble :(

I ordered a m6400 from the outlet with the 20% coupon since there was a configuration in the outlet exactly as I wanted it. It arrived today and when I opened the box I noticed that I received this "orange thing". I was surprised that I got a Covet instead of the Silver model that I was supposed to get. I find the orange ugly but I was like "mehhh" I will survive the color.

When I opened the box with the CD's and power supply I noticed that the power supply was smaller than expected and upon close inspection it was a 150W instead of the 210W one I was supposed to get and it looked like it went through a war and that it was "repacked" by a 5 year old. I decided to try the computer first with the 150w power supply but I noticed that the power cord supplied was not for this power supply so there was no way to power the computer. Also I was missing the Windows disk.

I called dell got transferred 5 times, an hour later I got the correct person and it seems they are going to send me the Vista disk, power supply and power cord. For some reason the guy did not want to send me the 64 bit OS disk even if their policy says I'm entitled to it.

Anyway I remembered that I still had another m6400 that arrived yesterday (I'm returning this one) and I decided to open the box to get the power supply from that machine and test the machine that I plan to keep. So I power it on and the machine hangs on the dell logo (never a good sign), then I try again and it works but I notice that the color seem to have the reported green/blue push. I update the Bios and plan to reinstall Vista with a copy that I have just to check if the computer works but the drive has problems accepting the disk and when it accepts it, it makes this cracking/chewing sounds that I think that it destroyed the disk and that I just lost the DVD. So I try to eject my Vista DVD but it does not come out. So I restart the computer run the diagnostic and the diagnostic gives me an error on the DVD-drive "Error Code 2000-0147" which means the drive is dead and it seems it ate my DVD for good.

At this point I restart the computer and Vista starts to hang, I restart and Vista shows only the upper half of the screen with the picture and the bottom half it shows black. Then if it works and everything seems fine I open explorer or something and it crashes.

So I decided to at least recover my DVD and open the bottom of the laptop to take out the slot drive and try something short of a hammer (hehe) to recover the disk but it seems that one of the screws is completely stripped so I can't even open the bottom of the computer.

At this point I called the dell reps that gave me their numbers to contact them if there are any issues but as expected they don't answer the phone and then I keep trying and waiting but it seems that the business hours are now over.

I'm right now wondering if I could get a replacement for this computer since all of this happened within 1 hour of me turning on the computer and things went so bad that I could not even reinstall Windows which is the 1st thing I do to a new computer. Needless to say I'm unhappy with the computer and if I can't get it replaced I will just return it since it has given so many problems in such a short amount of time.

 

You should be able to get a new laptop, it should be covered under warranty so they will have to fix its problems.

 

If you get it going the first thing you should do is the BIOS update. Then run diagnostics. If all okay then OS updates.

Latest BIOS is AO3. The important one was AO2.

Your machine most likely has AO1 which you can upgrade to AO3 directly.

Systems: Dell Precision M6400 Series
Version: A03
Build Date: 1/23/2009

Fixes / Enhancements:
1. Fixed issue where system may hang in certain memory configurations.

The BIOS release has been validated on the following operating systems:
1. Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1
2. Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3

 

WOW this sounds serious...i wouldn't even try updating BIOS, ask for, no, demand replacement...this machine had more damage than just software. Stripped screws etc. are not a good sign for a new lappy, who knows what else is in there, send it back!!

 

Well, that's why so cheap...you supposed to expect this.

 

AFAIK,you can't ask for replacement on rfrb machine,only repair.

 

No - your consumer rights are not affected.

 

Sorry to hear that, I got 2 m6400's and neither had any issues at all. Best of luck getting that fixed mate.