E6510 Sudden reboot with latest BIOS

I'm afraid I can't suggest anything other than rebooting as a "preventative" measure.  I'm rebooting once in the middle of the day and shutting down at the end of the day to try to prevent it from happening on my machine.  It seems to get worse in my case the longer the machine has been on.

I have noticed one thing, although I can't prove it.  It seems to me that this tends to occur after some kind of input from the mouse (I almost always have a USB mouse plugged in, so I can't say whether it also happens with the trackpad).  I can leave it on for long periods of time with the screen saver going or what have you and it's fine.  But running something where I click around a lot seems to aggravate the situation.

I've been very frustrated by this - the dell D820 this machine replaced never panicked, never blue screened, and was incredibly stable.  I wish I could say the same for this new E6510.

I suggest reinstalling Windows, but with only the device drivers for the hardware components that you actually need and use. My E6510 had daily video glitches until I reinstalled Win7 Pro X64 from scratch and left out the drivers for the devices that I wasn't actually using. E.g. I did not install the TCB, Bluetooth or eSATA Raid support, among other things, although i'm not suggesting that those particular drivers are at fault. I also made a point of explicitly disabling unused devices in the Windows device manager.

It has been rock stable ever since, with firmware A05.

Hi there.

I'm having the same issue including the ASF2 entry in the BIOS log.

Dell have replaced the motherboards and the port replicator.

Still have the issue.

Have you had any luck/progress?

Nice to know I'm not alone in this :emotion-1:

Last week I upgraded the firmware on my DVD Drive (HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GU40N) and I have not had a reboot since, but I'm not sure if that has fixed the problem or I've just been lucky since then.

I am going to try to get in touch with my user that has the worst reboot problems and do the same firmware upgrade, I'll report back if that solves his problem or not.

[Edit] So much for that. That user has a Panasonic drive, and its already running the latest firmware. Still if you have the GU40N, might be worth trying.

Hi again.

My DVD is TSST (Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology) so this doesn't seem to match.

I'll look into the firmware anyway.

Thanks.

[Edit] No new firmware for the TSST DVD.

Black screen of death again yesterday. Laptop not plugged into the port replicator. Spoke to Dell. They are going to replace the processor, ram and (I think) heat-sink. While I was waiting for the field service group to make an appointment today, the laptop locked up! No mouse pointer. No CTRL-ALT-DEL. No keyboard. Nothing. Had to power reset.

Hope the new processor fixes it. I'm getting more than frustrated with it all.

Well ... the new processor, RAM and heatsink didn't work either. Black Screen Of Death again this morning 5 minutes after startup.

Dell released the A06 BIOS update on Friday.  I applied this update and have been leaving my laptop running since.  So far no random shutdown/reboots ...

These issues sound similar to what is happening to a Latitude E 6510 that I am working with.  ...Headed out to get that A06 update....THANKS!

CD

Finally got my first black screen after 7 or 8 days of continuous uptime.  Not perfect, but much better than it was.  I can live with that.

I am having a similar issue with a Dell E6410. However, unlike you, I am not even able to get to the point of wiping and rebuilding. I just took this laptop out of the box and I am trying to boot to Acronis 10 from CD. Acronis will startup and as soon as I choose to enter the management console you hear the CD drive spin for about 2-3 seconds and then the laptop restarts itself. The only thing I was able to find is the same error that you found in the BIOS power log (ASF2 Force Off). The current BIOS version of this laptop is A06. Anyone found any resolutions for this issue?

Thanks,
TL

We are also experiencing the ASF Force Off problem.  It also happens on a Dell Latitude E6420 with A05 BIOS.  Was this ever resolved, or do we keep reporting the problem to Dell?

We never got the problem resolved, ended up ditching them and going with the E6520's.

My E4310 is showing a similar problem - a crash shutdown with no warning - just "off". On my 2nd replacement motherboard, memory swapped as well. "ASF2 Force Off" and an ACPI event logged in the BIOS. Not a happy bunny :-(