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iAutomaton
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March 24th, 2007 15:00
I've never had so many problems with one computer till now...
Inspiron 6000
1. Literally one month after my warranty expired, my battery fizzled out. I'm lucky if I get 20 minutes out of it, unplugged. My battery number was not covered in the recall.
2. Because of this fizzle, I now have black tape over my laptop lights because the battery light keeps flashing green and orange, which is really distracting. I wasn't able to find a way to disable this on the support site.
3. I cannot close the laptop while it's on. If I do, I risk melting the keyboard or blowing up the machine. I guess Dell thought it was a good idea to put the fan vents right next to the keyboard.
4. Just recently, and the true icing on the cake, if I restart my computer, it takes literally 2 hours for my keyboard to "warm-up," meaning that certain keys like t,y,tab,shift do not work for two hours after reboot or standby. I have tried reinstalling both the chipset, BIOS and factory settings, to no avail.
In my closet, I have a laptop that's 10 years old, that I used to use for word processing. I guarantee I could plug that in, turn it on and it would work like a charm. There would be no flashing light, no risk of explosion, no 20 minute battery life and definitely no two hour warm-up to use certain keys on the keyboard. It's a Compaq. My parents have a Compaq that's 5 years old that works great. I do not foresee neither this Inspiron working 3 years from now nor myself buying anymore Dell products in the future.
iAutomaton
6 Posts
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Posted March 24th, 2007 17:00
We could start with number 4...biznatch11
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Posted March 24th, 2007 21:00
1 & 2. How old is the battery? I'm on my third battery for my almost 6 year old Inspiron 4000 so that's 1 every 2 years which is pretty average, rechargable batteries can only be recharged a finite amount of times. Batteries are only warrentied for 1 year anyways. If the flashing battery light is bothering you just take out the battery this might make it stop flashing. You don't need the battery in to use the laptop when you're plugged in
3. Has something changed here since you first got it? Is it running hotter now? Why would you even want to close the lid for any amount of time with the laptop on? Set it to standby or hibernate automatically when you close the lid.
4. Attach an external keyboard to see if the problem is with the actual keyboard on the laptop or if it's a software issue. If needed, replacing the keyboard on your laptop takes about 5 minutes (I'm not sure the price to buy a new one though.)tonebalone
1372 Posts
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Posted March 29th, 2007 13:00
Buy a new keyboard. And a new battery. And blow out your air vents with canned air while you're at it.iAutomaton
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Posted April 4th, 2007 04:00
Well, good news, I've been able to narrow down a possible cause to this keyboard problem: my USB ports. Whenever I leave my mouse and secondary harddrive disconnected for long periods of time, something seems to reset and when I plug them in, those keyboard keys break down for a couple hours. I need information on possible USB software to download from Microsoft or Dell to fix this problem. Again: - keep my USB items unplugged for a couple hours - plug them back in - keyboard breaks down - it's weird
AirChief
91 Posts
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Posted March 24th, 2007 15:00