Dell E1505 Questions

Quick question, we've been working on tuning up my daughter's new E1505 since we got it a few weeks ago. Removed McAfee and other bloatware, fine-tuned the bios, ran MS update (150 Mb download!), etc.. It's now running great, although the screensaver came on while we were defragging the external Maxtor hard drive and froze the system - any idea why this would happen? We just extended the time before the screensaver came on to get around this, but it seems like with the duo core processor this shouldn't happen.

Also, we clicked on the Dell support icon in the system tray and it did not find any drivers that were not up to date. Can we count on this Dell automated software program to be sure we have the most current drivers, etc.? Thanks in advanve for your help.

 

There's a Microsoft 'ACPI' bug that, as I understand it, can cause certain laptops with Core Duo processors to have power management issues, including up to a 1 hour loss of battery life relative to machines without the issue. The full article from Tom's Hardware Guide is here: http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/01/28/toms_hardware_uncovers_power_drain_issue/

While it may NOT be related, some users on other forums have reported hangs when coming out of sleep if they are using external USB devices, or after opening and closing the laptop lid (when this is set to send the laptop into sleep). This could be your problem, unfortunately I don't understand the issue fully enough to make a better analysis and no one has EXPLICITLY made a connection between the ACPI bug and sleep hangs. If this were the problem not sure if one would expect it to always hang when coming out of sleep with a USB device attached, not just during defrag, but maybe there is some link with drive activity.

Most of the reviews of the E1505 have been good though, and since I just bought one myself (shipped today) I will be looking into it pretty hard myself.

PS - Also another good link here which makes me think there may be no relation between the ACPI bug and your freeze, although its good to know about nonetheless considering it could shave an hour off battery life if you have a USB 2.0 device connected. http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2693

 

Just sounds like windows to me. Something opens up... computer freezes.

 

The sleep mode affect many laptops not just Dell. Is Windows issue

 

Right. That's why I say it's a Microsoft bug.

 

Thanks for the info on the ACPI bug, interesting reading. Now, does anyone have an answer to my Dell support / driver question?

 

you can, but at a performance hit. i personally do not like stuff running the background continually polling servers. i would rather turn off any and all auto updates for any application and do it myself.

it's your call on which strategy to use.

 

I have the screen open/close freeze bug, but it's not related to sleep mode as I have it disabled.

 

So your machine no longer automatically goes to sleep when you close the lid?
Out of curiosity I polled the IT guys where I work and they said the same problem shows up on an earlier line of Dell's Notebooks - Latitude C610's - dating back to 2001 or so. Closing the lid causes the laptop to sleep and never wake up. For those turning off the setting to automatically sleep/standby when the lid is closed fixed the problem, but you are saying not so for the E1505?

My E1505 should arrive tomorrow, hoping I can get it to behave itself.

 

see this: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=1317849&postcount=55 and then my responses on page 7 and 8.

 

Actually, when our E1505 goes into hibernation, the only way we seem to be able to wake it up is to close and reopen the lid, but it does not freeze.

Another question, too. I was checking the system hardware settings last night, and it showed that the computer had four default monitors installed. Needless to say, I uninstalled three of them and everything seems to work fine. Any idea why it would show so many monitors installed? Everything else looked good with no hardware conflicts, and the machine works great.

 

Anyone have any thoughts about this?

 

Nobody??? I checked again last night and the System hardware again shows all four default monitors, so I guess they're necessary???

 

Not sure why but I see the same thing. I don't have the laptop accessible now but mine showed two Default monitors and two other display entries. I have the E1505 with X1400 video card.
There were a total of four items showing up for displays. Two said "Default monitor" one said something about LCD and there was another one that I forget now.
I tried uninstalling the extra ones but they were always immediately reinstalled, and my machine is running fine so I just left things as they are.

I did uninstall the video drivers that came with the machine and install the Omega drivers. I don't play games but there were enough recommendations for that that I just did it. So far no problems recording or playing back dvds and live tv though.

I agree all the extra monitors seem odd, but after uninstalling all the bloatware my performance is good enough that I am not fixing it if it isn't broken right now.

Only oddities I have seen are:
1)The Intel 3945 wireless network card disabled itself a few times yesterday. It corresponded with when I ran updates using the Installshield update software that ships with the laptop, so I got rid of that. No problems when I ran MS WindowsUpdate. Each time I could not reenable the card even after turning the Wireless Zero service back on etc. Rebooting fixed it though and it has been up solid for 18 hours or so as of this morning. Network connectivity has been solid with my Netgear router, set to use "G" only since I only have wirless G devices.

2)Occasional stutters watching live TV at fullscreen in media center. Almost totally gone now with Omega video drivers installed, and after bloatware uninstalled. No problems playing fullscreen recorded tv or DVD.

3)BSOD on first boot after the laptop shut itself down due to low battery while recording tv. Long story. I can't really fault that though, stupid thing to do to it, and it recovered fine after a reboot.

4).GIF images are pixelated or squashed in Internet Explorer. I spent a lot of time troubleshooting my video/display until I read some articles online that suggest this is a quirk of the way IE renders things, and is showing up because it stretches the page to fit on the widescreen monitor. No problems in Firefox though, and if I take the distorted .gif from IE and rt-click>copy it into MSPaint say, it displays corrctly there. If this is an IE issue it has sealed my switch to Firefox since pages that use .gif menubars (Apple.com) look like **** in IE for me now. Additionally some pages (Intel.com) are totally hosed and chopped up in IE, again posts I read elsewhere attributed this to rendering in IE.
Anyone else seeing this?

 

I want a refund from Dell....!!!!! I only have three!!

Sounds like this is not to be unexpected based on this White Paper

hth

Mark