Precision m6400 Black Screen Crashes...

hmm... seems all i hear is crickets on this thread... is there any Dell Techs that can chime in on this?

it happened again last nite... 3 times during gaming... all quite random...

iirc, 1 hour after start, 30 secs into reboot, 2 hour after reboot...

3rd day... 7 crashes to date... and all i get from Dell service tech is that they need me to reseat the LCD cable... and try out on external monitor...

yep, reseated...

yep, external monitor tried

yep, black screened again...

now i'm beginning to wonder...  why do i have to stay up late at night and do DELL's work? now if and only if i get a service tech to come to me to replace something... i wil ahve to take a day off work... and prolly no pay for that day... and get this laptop to work...

/frustrated...

I have the same problem.  Anytime I try to run something that uses the 3d accelerator (regardless of the "quality settings" in the program) the computer screen goes blank and I have to do a hard reboot.  Dell has had me replace the video card twice now as well as all of the heatsinks in the machine, but it still happens.

I'm having the exact same problem.  10-15 minutes after starting any kind of 3d application... black screen, hard reboot, rinse and repeat. 

well, dell has had me replace nearly all of the internals on my laptop and i'm still having the same issue.  i've replaced the video card twice, the fans, the LCD, and the system board.  all that's left is the ram, cpu, wireless, and the hdd.  i replaced the lcd and the system boards today and black screened within 30 minutes of turning the machine on.

i'm beginning to think that the m6400 is a bad build... :emotion-9:

well, already replaced once...

saddened to say that the new graphics card was "squeezed" into a smaller box, and they shipped it very poorly packaged.

the Heat Sink fins were pressed down here and there... but i didn't mind IF it worked...

sadly, it happens more frequently now... black screens all over...

i'm beginning to loose hope...

i'm also deeply saddened by lack of dell's responses on these community boards...

have another replacement scheduled for next week... i'm starting to loose hope.

m6400 is a lemon?

It definitely seems to be an overheating problem.  The bottom of the laptop gets so hot that you can't put your hand on it for more than a couple seconds without it burning you.  I was able to use it last night for the longest stretch since I've gotten it by propping up the backside of the laptop.  After 2 hours is it black screened and I had to reboot.  After that it locked up every 5 mins or so.

I had the overheating issue as well until I replaced the fans...no more heat issues, but I'm still getting the black screen...

I just bought an m6400 and I have the EXACT same issue. I have ran two games WoW and Supreme Commander, both make the screen go black at random times. However it does seem to be heat related because if I keep the bottom of the laptop propped I get more time before the black screen of death. But once it happens you can restart and it goes black fast...Horrible!!!!

We NEED a fix!

I have updated to the latest BIOS and Vid drivers... no diff..

Hi

same happens to me. Every time I try to use the graphic capabilities this machine ought to have, it blacks out. Every 3d game I've tested (including WoW, Colonization, Civilization and more) crashes with black screen and freezeup.  Doesn't help much to turn all details to low, sooner or later it goes black (within 1 hour or so).

The heat seems to be the main issue since it gets very hot and if you pop the back up a bit it lasts longer - as others have said here.

I had vista 64-bit installed but we thought it might have been the OS so we switched to Windows 7 enterprise 64-bit. The black screen persists though.

I think this machine must be labeled a powerful office machine, but its not for the casual gamers out there. I guess some heavy video-editing will get the same negative results (?).

This machine is too pricey for this to happen imho.

Maybe better external cooling will help, anyone got any ideas on how to do that?

Well, after replacing every single component inside the machine except for the HDD, I told the Dell tech that I would like to try replacing the nVidia card with the new ATI FirePro card.  We were able to narrow the issue down to be some sort of weird compatability issue between the AC brick and the nVidia card.  If I ran on battery power, I could have any 3D application open that I wanted.  Games, Benchmarking tools, 3DStudioMax...all at the same time, and it wouldn't go to a black screen until the battery died :emotion-4:  Swaping the nVidia card out with a completely different card would be able to tell us if it was in fact the card not getting along with the brick.  Plus, the ATI card is about $180 cheaper, still has 1GB memory, and benchmarks higher.

After a week of heavy stress testing, I have not had it black-screen crash on me one single time.  I would strongly suggest directing the next tech you guys talk to to this thread and request the ATI FirePro card instead of the nVidia Quadro card.

Good Luck!

Curious, did you swap out to an ATI card or did Dell replace it?

I swapped it out myself, but I had to give them my WPD Tech ID number first...

The black-screen lockup problem has plagued me all summer.  I've lost dozens (if not approaching 100) hours of time dealing with this problem.  I have an M6400 with the NVidia card running XP.

It's definitely something between the power supply and the nVidia card.  I too can be on battery power and it will work fine.  As soon as I connect to wall power, the card crashes within minutes.  My theory is that being on wall power kicks the card to a faster speed state and overheats the laptop.  This is based on the fact that on wall power, if I put the laptop on an insulated surface like glass, it overheats within 1-2 minutes.  If I suspend the laptop in the air for better airflow, It'll go 5-10ish minutes.  If I blow a fan underneath the laptop, it can go 15-20 minutes.

I've already had Dell replace the NVidia card and now if anything, it's worse.  I'm very disappointed Dell hasn't recalled these laptops and is instead letting their user base debug their own problematic hardware.  When you pay 2-4x the going rate for a high-end laptop, you expect it to be supported well.

Hello! I am also experiencing the black-screen issue and I want to change the Graphic card also. The only thing is that I am not sure about the performance of the firepro m7740. Could you do me a favor to test the 3dmark 06 benchmark at 1280*1024 resolution? Thanks!