Dell Precision M6400 Tech Support Nightmare

See the amazing $6000 Dell Precision M6400 that locks up, breaks or otherwise does not allow you to work. I have two of these and they both do the same exact thing .. This movie was taken just after a Dell technical support guy replaced everything in the machine. Does not matter if it is XP XP64 VISTA VISTA64. This one was 40 days old and never even one day allowed continual operation! Dell won't return money and will only exchange with a refurb with no guarantee replacement won't have same problems.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Dell
• Precision
• M6400
• technical
• support
• bad
• laptops

[razor16190]

Do you have the video of the technician opening it? Would be great to see that.

[Arena3DX]

@razor16190 Yes, somewhere I do but Dell finally gave me a full refund after they had no where else to turn and no one else to blame.

[Shiftfallout]

I dont have this problem. The LA Film School recently gave all their animation students and game development students these laptops, not one of the entire 30+ students encountered this problem. Out of all the notebooks I have used, the Dell m6400 is one of the best. I also have a couple of Sagers. Sorry to hear you have this very strange problem, though my own experiences show that what you are experiencing is not that common.

[Arena3DX]

This post was a heads up for Dell buyers to be aware of a flaw that affects a %'age of these specific machines and also make them aware of Dell's degraded support paradigm that punishes high end buyers.

[RHQ89]

Hi I also have an M6400, the only issues I have are that with xp sometimes won't boot properly and need to hard reboot, not very often and that the microphone doesn't work, with vista it's the small freezes with the mouse but other than that works fine, linux just doesn't have all the drivers but works nice. I recommend you windows 7, I tried the beta with vista drivers and works like a dream, never had a problem with it, never. I'm waiting impatiently for it, haha.

[Arena3DX]

Similar M6400 Covet posts were removed from Dell's forum site days after I told support it was an issue and guided them to Dell forum posts to support it.

[juman09]

I have a m6400 and mine did the same thing all i had to do is get a new driver for the sound card... and can i have your blood orange one ha ha

[The72Rabbit]

Wow! I can't believe this stuff from Dell. I just bought an M6500 with 16 gigs of Ram and the only problem I had was the choppy video and audio in Windows Media Player. It ended up that the FIPS fingerprint reader and Smart Card reader software was interfering with Windows Media Player. So I deactivated them in msconfig.exe. Now I have 2 decorations to the M6500. Oh well.

[darkmark420]

YUP I had the same problem, yeah they wanted to tell me it was a software issue with windows... whatever I got a refurb and it is a 100 times better. but yeah now that I got a new m6400 all my days are bright and sunny: you should do the same SIR

[daw126]

DO NOT BUY DELL COMPUTERS!!!

Bottom Line: If you want to have a working computer for longer then 6 months and you

want to have good customer/technical support

DO NOT BUY FROM DELL

[The72Rabbit]

I was about to buy one of these puppies. Did you ever resolve the issue? I am very concerned about this and am glad I came across your site. I came very close to a purchase today but couldn't as the IT department failed to complete my CC transaction onto a corp. acct.

[SAMFICOM]

What I also noticed, is that the Dell windows installation is crap, so I downloaded all the latest drivers from the Dell support web site and re-installed the windows from scratch, installing drivers in the controlled manner. As the result I have a very stable and very fast machine. I have calibrated display - colors in applications supporting ICM profile are great, for non-color managed apps. - oversaturated green and red as with any wide gammut monitor.

[SAMFICOM]

I have M6400 for almost year now. Got it from Dell outlet for 1/2 of the price. I have Quaddro FX 3700M, RGB LED screen, 2.53GHz quad CPU, 8GB of RAM, 2x320GB HDDs. I had problem with overheating (dust build-up in the CPU cooling grills). Cleaned the dust myself, and to prevent build-up now I am periodically cleaning the grills with pressurised gas. The laptop is perfect. You must calibrate the screen to get right colors.