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

• Dell Latitude memory errors messages; freezing, random rebooting problems

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

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

• I8kfanGUI homepage and download

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!