Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

[veritas72]

How would they know what went wrong, if it went wrong? Tell them you were going from A06 to A09.

Anyway, Dell's BIOS updates seem to be quite robust so the chance of a problem is small.

John

no kidding, right? They were freaking out about my suggestion to revert the BIOS to A06. what pains. they release a bios that is clearly messed up, and threaten to cancel my warranty...

[Vikram]

Webcam problem

I started experiencing problems with the webcam on my E6400. The pan and zoom functions provided by the driver no longer work, the video flickers and some of the image settings like contrast or saturation don't seem to hold their settings. All these started a few days ago and until then everything worked as they should.
I've tried reinstalling the driver and reverting to the old driver but nothing seems to make a difference. The webcam isn't activated in Windows safe mode so I can't do anything there either.

Can anybody help?

Edit : It just occurred to me that this might be linked to the A09 BIOS. Could this be the case?

[veritas72]

sure, any input/output could, at least in theory, relate to the bios change.

[GoodBytes]

Ok, after a call at Dell tech support and claimed I had "faulty" plastic and explain the issue, 2 days ago. I had dell technician (from a different company) pass-by to replace the screen frame and palm rest (which include the touchpad, contact less smart card, power button, speaker, left speaker grid, touchpad mouse button. And this is the interesting part. The technician was descent, sure has experience, but not enough. When he worked on the laptop he did not protect it at all, so the cover lid got scratch. And Dell gave him the wrong screen frame. Dell did this mistake due to a problem in their descriptions. They saw "No camera/Microsoft". The tech support guys tought "No Camera AND no microphone" but it actually means "No Camara and WITH microphone". Anyway, I reported to Dell once he finished (1 hour), about the scratch lid, damaged right side speaker grid, wrong screen frame, and not working touch pad and not working backlight keyboard.

Dell sent the next day a technician (a different one) to replace: palm rest, speaker grid, motherboard and lid cover (which was a pain for him as it's so dam delicate, I don't blame him, I was expected a non working screen, frankly). Well guess what. Once he finished the keyboard backlight still doesn't work not my 2 mouses, doesn't boot into Windows, say my Dell battery is not a Dell battery and won't recharge it (CMOS needed to be cleared to fix that problem), and not working Microphone... He spent 4, yes 4 hours! I was there with him to make sure he works, does things correct, properly. He did.
So basically the only thing that was left out original was the keyboard the screen itself, optical drive, battery and CPU. Dell just paid over the price of a my laptop to TRY and get it fix, and made things worst. Anyway, I am getting a new one. And if you ask, the scratching problem is still there. Well that was a fun try! The tech Guy at the end was disappointed of himself to cause more problems, and for staying for 4 hours.

From my understanding, I get to keep my laptop until I receive the new one. The first technician forgot to take the original palm rest.. so now I have extra speaker, touch pad mouse, touch pad mouse buttons, power button, right fan grid, and of course a slightly damaged palm rest. Oh and my Vista 64-bit Business product key. (So I'll guess I just got a free Vista product Key)

[orjan]

Webcam problem

I started experiencing problems with the webcam on my E6400. The pan and zoom functions provided by the driver no longer work, the video flickers and some of the image settings like contrast or saturation don't seem to hold their settings. All these started a few days ago and until then everything worked as they should.
I've tried reinstalling the driver and reverting to the old driver but nothing seems to make a difference. The webcam isn't activated in Windows safe mode so I can't do anything there either.

Can anybody help?

Edit : It just occurred to me that this might be linked to the A09 BIOS. Could this be the case?

I have the A09 BIOS and working pan and zoom.

What is the webcam device called in the device manager? If it is called "USB video" or similar you have the default webcam drivers in Windows and as far as I know they don't support pan or zoom.

Do you have the latest version of the webcam software that was released recently.

Örjan

[John Ratsey]

Webcam problem

I started experiencing problems with the webcam on my E6400. The pan and zoom functions provided by the driver no longer work, the video flickers and some of the image settings like contrast or saturation don't seem to hold their settings. All these started a few days ago and until then everything worked as they should.
I've tried reinstalling the driver and reverting to the old driver but nothing seems to make a difference. The webcam isn't activated in Windows safe mode so I can't do anything there either.

Can anybody help?

Edit : It just occurred to me that this might be linked to the A09 BIOS. Could this be the case?

It's also working OK for me with the A09 BIOS and the new webcam software that was released last week?

Device Manager lists it as an imaging Device.

John

[zenru]

It switches between charging and not charging the battery. If you use the laptop on an airplane (with power adapter connected) you are not always allowed to charge the battery. I guess the airlines are afraid of exploding batteries.

Also if you are mainly using the laptop on mains power I believe you may improve battery lifetime by switching charging off.

Örjan

Yep, I appreciate this feature the most as I always need to take out the battery from other laptops to preserve the battery lifetime when using the power adapter. With this function, battery can be left in place and not charged. Wished they had a dedicated mechanical switch for this though.

[Vikram]

I have the A09 BIOS and working pan and zoom.

What is the webcam device called in the device manager? If it is called "USB video" or similar you have the default webcam drivers in Windows and as far as I know they don't support pan or zoom.

Do you have the latest version of the webcam software that was released recently.

Örjan

It's also working OK for me with the A09 BIOS and the new webcam software that was released last week?

Device Manager lists it as an imaging Device.

John

It's working again! I'm not sure why or how, but after I reinstalled systematically some other drivers, like the chipset, etc., all the features of the camera are working fine now. So that means that it definitely wasn't the BIOS. It's all just a black box (literally and figuratively!) - no idea what goes on inside.

Thanks for the comments.

[glentium]

Yep, I appreciate this feature the most as I always need to take out the battery from other laptops to preserve the battery lifetime when using the power adapter. With this function, battery can be left in place and not charged. Wished they had a dedicated mechanical switch for this though.

is there a third party utility that does this automatically? otherwise, everytime you turn on your E6400, you must always remember to press Fn+F2.

With ThinkPad, I had a T60 before the E6400, you can set it in way that it only starts charging when it reach a user-specified percentage and stop charging at a user-specified percentage also.

[Dux Ducis]

Awesome. Finally got my red E6400, quite pleased with it.

A few niggling issues, main one is the Nvidia drivers. What's the news with the latest version and where can I get 'em?