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 13th, 2009 Category: General, PhotographyThe bigger CF cards and mega pixels of digital photo cameras get, the more you want to have the pictures copied to your notebook/desktop, for sure. After I got my Canon 5D MKII with 21 mega-pixels I really want to have the speed increased it takes to copy pictures to my notebook. With my very old card reader it takes about half an our to copy. Ok, firewire sounds really fast and my notebook has a firewire port, so I decided to get a firewire CF card reader…
So I went to a local photo store and purchased a Hama firewire CF card reader. Back at home I recognized that the firewire cable doesn’t fit into the firewire port of my Dell Latitude notebook. Went to a PC cable store and got a cable from firewire 400 to firewire 800. Fine, everything fits now put Windows 7 did not detect anything on the firewire port.
After searching the Internet I found out that firewire CF card readers need at least 6-pin firewire ports because they need the power supply from the firewire port. If you have a 4 pin port – like me – you can not use firewire CF card readers. Unfortunately I did not get this information from my friendly photo store…
Furthermore firewire doesn’t make sense until you have firewire 800. Theoretically there is no speed between firewire 400 and USB2.0.
As a result I’ll by a new USB2.0 CF card reader for my notebook.
Further information
4 pin firewire compact flash card reader?
Firewire CF Card Reader
Written on October 13, 2009 | Posted in
General,
Photography 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 January 25th, 2009 Category: Fun, GeneralWhen my Dell notebook Latitude D820 warms up (means running for a few hours) I hear the fan louder than in the beginning also there is not much CPU load. It seems the whole notebook warms up. Cleaning the notebook with a vacuum cleaner did not help. I got this tip from a woman, for her notebook this works. Ok, a noisy fan is disturbing.
Before purchasing a notebook cooler I decided to check if such a external cooler with fan could really cool down the notebook. I tried several positions with a simple PC fan and finally found one position which cools down the CPU temperature in idle mode from 50°C to 38°C. Now the fans of the notebook are almost noiseless.
A incredible result! But I think I will purchase a more nice looking notebook cooler soon. Cooling down your notebook will also improve it’s life time since all electronic components really don’t like heat. You can read this e.g. from official statistical data from some hard disc vendors, which show how life time increases with higher environment temperature.
Putting the slow rotating fan as shown in the picture below decreased CPU temperature from 50°C to 38°C. Unbelievable!
Written on January 25, 2009 | Posted in
Fun,
General 
