January 10th, 2010 Category: GeneralRecently my several years old Dell Latitude D820 began to freeze several times, around 1 time a day. It happened never all the years before. The last half year I’ve upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate and purchased new 4GB RAM, but the freezes started a few weeks ago. This is why I think the problem is not related with Windows 7. For checking the hardware I’ve used the Dell diagnostic tool without detecting and problems.
One time a blue screen was displayed with a memory parity error. So I’ve tried to remove first one RAM and after still having freezes the other one. Still with the problem.
After reading many posts which said this may not only be a problem of the RAM, it may be also a problem of:
- motherboard
- graphics card
- WLAN (WiFi) card
- …
Removing the WLAN card isn’t difficult, so I did. Furthermore I’ve disabled everything with WLAN and Bluetooth in the BIOS. Afterwards the notebook was running without problems for a few days.
Today I’ve put the WLAN card back into the Notebook (BIOS settings still disabled) and after a few hours a freeze happened again with crazy graphics output.
It seems that the WLAN card causes this problem in my case. It’s not 100 percent proofed but I’ll do further checks and reports.
Update 28th January 2010
Since the last crash after a few hours putting the WLAN card back in the Notebook it runs stable now. WLAN and Bluetooth is still disabled in the BIOS. It really looks that WLAN or Bluetooth causes the problem in my case.
Update 13th August 2010
In the mean time I’ve recognized that the fan on the left side was blocked by dust. To remove the dust it’s needed to open your notenbook. You have to release quite a lot screws to achieve this, instructions can be found on the internet. After removing the dust from the fan the notebook works much more stable.
Additionally I’ve installed a SSD hard disc. This is pretty cool, you will recognize a noticeable difference:
- performance (boot time and general)
- notebook stays cooler
- saves power when running notebook on battery
Putting a SSD into your notebook, a thing I can really recommend.
Links
Written on January 10, 2010 | Posted in
General October 6th, 2009 Category: GeneralI decided to upgrade my Dell Latitude D820 notebook from 2GB to 4GB memory so I went into a store, purchased 4 GB RAM and put them into my notebook. By the way, Windows 7 Ultimate is running on this notebook since a few weeks very well. What happened?
First boot
Screen stays blank and the three LED’s on the keyboard were blinking.
Second boot
Removed 2GB and booted again, everything correct.
Third boot
Put 2GB back again and notebook booted with the message:
The amount of system memory has changed.
If you did not change your memory…
To resolve this issue, try to reseat the memory.
Huuuu what? Never seen such a message before in my “IT-life”. Tried several things, rebooted several times. Result was the same. While goggling on the desktop I did not watch the notebook. When I come back to the notebook an additional message appeared:
Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility
Press F5 to run onboard diagnostics.
So I pressed F5 for the diagnostics just to see what will happen. After running the diagnostics the notebook booted fine and recognized the new memory.
If you see this strange message also after you upgrade your memory just wait a little bit until the next message appears. Very strange behavior, indeed. But now it works, memory for the masses 
One issue is that you will only be able to use about 3.3GB of your 4.0GB, for details check this blog entry:
Missing memory
My Windows 7 32-bit installation reports 4.00GB installed, but only 3.25GB are usable. The reason why Windows is not able to access all the 4GB is kind of hardware restriction. For details refer to the Microsoft Help and Support article:
According to Microsoft this also affects 64-bit editions of Windows Operating Systems, sounds reasonable since it’s a hardware restriction.
Written on October 6, 2009 | Posted in
General September 20th, 2009 Category: GeneralI use the tool I8kfanGUI on my Dell Latitude D820 because it really reduces the noise of the fans. I don’t use any special settings, only [x] automatic fan control is enabled after installation. This causes the fans to be more quiet if the notebook is in idle mode.
This is pretty cool, if you are watching TV or doing anything else the notebook noise doesn’t disturb you so much. And it’s a free tool, so don’t forget to donate!
By the way, it works well with my Windows 7 Ultimate installation.
Links
Written on September 20, 2009 | Posted in
General 
