Some Problems with E6410

I will create a new thread than post on the owner's forum, so I could get more feedback here.

1. When I take the laptop out of the dock when it is still running, the touch pad is disabled somehow. The buttons work and the track point works. Just the touch pad itself is non responsive completely until I put it to sleep and wake it up. Drivers are installed correctly. What is the issue here?

2. The CD drive randomly pops out. Only happens when the laptop is not in the extended battery life mode (so when the cd drive is actually powered by the motherboard). It happens completely random. Never had this happen on my M4400, M4500, E6400, etc. Is this just a bad cd drive?

3. I know flickering happens when waking up from sleep. But too often, the screen also acts as if the refresh rate is really low. You can almost see patterns of fine horizontal lines.

I had the LCD and the motherboard replaced already. Drivers and bios are all latest and I tried everything I could. I would appreciate any creative or unique solutions. Thanks in advance!

 

I would have suspected the motherboard (but it's been changed) for the cd tray popping out, but it could be a bad connection too. Try reseating the optical drive, also check if the connectors are clean before putting it back in. It could also be a program/process telling the drive to eject, are you running any specific program when that happens.

For the undocking, do you have the touchpad set to disable when a mouse is plugged in?

 

Hello,

1. It's not the motherboard. The drive had the same issue with my old E6400 and even after the mobo replacement. I could try to clean the connector. But it is not the program. It really happens out of the blue entirely, with any kind of program.

2. I just checked the settings. The touchpad is not disabled with mouse plugged in.

 

It could also be a bad contact in the eject button or the mechanism is just loose (just thought of that last one). There's a spring mechanism that is responsible for giving the optical it's initial push, if that is worn, could also explain the strange behavior. If it's the switch or the mechanism, I'd just go for another DVD burner, they're dirt cheap after all. I'll check the TP behavior with my M6700 and dock, is your touchpad an Alps or Synaptics?

 

Hello,

It is Alps one.

 

If I remember correctly from 2 years ago, forcing a high refresh rate gets rid of the flickering. I think I used 75Hz most of the time (you could only see flicker if you tried really hard). You can do this by using the Nvidia Control Panel and creating a custom resolution. Just make sure you have the minimum refresh rate in the Extended battery life mode turned off and keep it at this res, but your battery life will suffer (probably) some.

 

Alright, so I just undocked my M6700 and TP is still working, so either the issue is specific to your laptop or the model/generation.

 

Thanks tijo for the update.

Looks like the drive itself is the problem. As per touchpad, eh I will just ignore it. I rarely take it out of the drive to use it, without putting it to sleep first. Thanks all for the feedback.