Hi all,
I'm writing this mail because I'm having much problems with my Dell laptops.
Specifically the Dell Latitude C600 and C610 in a docking station. Keep in mind that the docking station uses a separate, external NIC.
This external NIC is the 3C920 (which is 3c905c-TX compatible, and therefore plug and play in Win 2K.), and the internal NIC is a 3COM Combo Ethernet 10/100 adapter.
However the problem also occurred at an never docked before laptop which also is a newer version (C610 instead of the C600).
The cards (display, NIC) work with so-called 'profiles'. They store every difference of state (eg. docked, undocked etc.)
I had a talk with support about it, but they claimed to have never heard about it before.
I'll try to explain which problems I'm referring to:
After a reboot the network simply drops. It's complaining about a driver problem in Device Manager (Code 10). If you then try to update the driver and unmark all location options, it says it did not find a newer driver. Clicking on finish will then enable it after all (?). So the driver itself seems okay. Any updates on the drivers don't resolve anything.
After a fresh start it will not start any NIC. Rebooting a few times does the job.
They suffer form 'the memory could not be written' errors. Also the famous 'explorer.exe' error shows up too often.
Simple network installations seems to fail due to inconsistent network traffic.
Also a reboot may cause loss of display settings
At first I thought it was caused by the users themselves, but it happened to me and Nico too.
Now, before trying to guess what the cause is, I already tried the following:
- A complete manual reinstall
- A complete install via an image file
- Swapped hard disks between working machines
- Changed the memory
- Flashed the BIOS from A19 to A20
- Updated any driver and used the originals (after fresh installations) Also tried different orders.
- Created DOCKED and UNDOCKED profiles
- Tried all BIOS NIC settings (Optimized and IRQ 11)
- An install of Windows XP (Same, or even worse problems. My soundcard wouldn't play via external speakers anymore)
Changed the docking station (which had the most result at this moment)
- Only no problems were detected when Linux was installed.
For now I delegated it to Dell. They tried to blame our network (but not explain why), but the expert withdrew that conclusion fairly fast as it only consists on these specific laptops.
My own final conclusion is a dead CMOS battery, but how is this possible on such an amount of laptops?
However, I was hoping you had similar stories, or maybe I confirmed your doubts.
Could ANYONE who has ANY idea about what is going on please let me know.
I'm writing this mail because I'm having much problems with my Dell laptops.
Specifically the Dell Latitude C600 and C610 in a docking station. Keep in mind that the docking station uses a separate, external NIC.
This external NIC is the 3C920 (which is 3c905c-TX compatible, and therefore plug and play in Win 2K.), and the internal NIC is a 3COM Combo Ethernet 10/100 adapter.
However the problem also occurred at an never docked before laptop which also is a newer version (C610 instead of the C600).
The cards (display, NIC) work with so-called 'profiles'. They store every difference of state (eg. docked, undocked etc.)
I had a talk with support about it, but they claimed to have never heard about it before.
I'll try to explain which problems I'm referring to:
After a reboot the network simply drops. It's complaining about a driver problem in Device Manager (Code 10). If you then try to update the driver and unmark all location options, it says it did not find a newer driver. Clicking on finish will then enable it after all (?). So the driver itself seems okay. Any updates on the drivers don't resolve anything.
After a fresh start it will not start any NIC. Rebooting a few times does the job.
They suffer form 'the memory could not be written' errors. Also the famous 'explorer.exe' error shows up too often.
Simple network installations seems to fail due to inconsistent network traffic.
Also a reboot may cause loss of display settings
At first I thought it was caused by the users themselves, but it happened to me and Nico too.
Now, before trying to guess what the cause is, I already tried the following:
- A complete manual reinstall
- A complete install via an image file
- Swapped hard disks between working machines
- Changed the memory
- Flashed the BIOS from A19 to A20
- Updated any driver and used the originals (after fresh installations) Also tried different orders.
- Created DOCKED and UNDOCKED profiles
- Tried all BIOS NIC settings (Optimized and IRQ 11)
- An install of Windows XP (Same, or even worse problems. My soundcard wouldn't play via external speakers anymore)
Changed the docking station (which had the most result at this moment)
- Only no problems were detected when Linux was installed.
For now I delegated it to Dell. They tried to blame our network (but not explain why), but the expert withdrew that conclusion fairly fast as it only consists on these specific laptops.
My own final conclusion is a dead CMOS battery, but how is this possible on such an amount of laptops?
However, I was hoping you had similar stories, or maybe I confirmed your doubts.
Could ANYONE who has ANY idea about what is going on please let me know.
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