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General discussion

Latitude E6500 won't boot - intermittent

Oct 29, 2009 1:40AM PDT

Dell Notebook Latitude E6500
OS WinXP2
In Service 5 weeks

Intermittent problem:
3 occurrences in the last two weeks.

Notebook is off (not Standby, not Hibernate).
Place unit on Docking Station and press Power button.
Power LED lights then unit turns off - will not boot.

Undock notebook and press Power (no external power - unit is operating on battery).
Power LED lights, HD LED lights then both turn LED's turn off. Then CapsLock LED blinks 22 times.

Remove battery, then reinsert battery: same scenario as above.

Remove battery and remove memory, then reinsert memory and battery: notebook boots normally.

Is there a simple solution to this problem?
Yes, I can call IT and maybe get it resolved in two or three days. It may take much longer since it is an intermittent issue.

Thank you

Discussion is locked

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At 5 weeks old. The warranty
Oct 29, 2009 4:11AM PDT

Is still good. Use that!

The only clue I see is that dock station. Those were troublesome for years so we stopped buying them. Some demanded them so we put it in writing they were unsupported.

But that's the clue. Try to keep it off the dock. And see if Dell issued a newer BIOS (that's where we found a few to get fixed.)
Bob

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dead now
Nov 4, 2009 3:47AM PST

Flashed with new BIOS load. 5 days later, doing the same thing as described in first post. IT is coming tomorrow to check it out.
Dell Laptops are trouble-prone.

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Odd statement.
Nov 4, 2009 11:17AM PST

I'm surrounded by dells at the office. Since the population is nearly 100% dells you could say that all failures at our office are dells. But that's not adjusting for the fact that some 500 are Dells and a handful are others.

Back to docks. We found those too flaky years ago.

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story continues....
Nov 9, 2009 10:42PM PST

Dell E6500 failure to boot continued last week as often without Dock as with Dock. Docking station did not contribute to issue.

Nov 3 - E6500 notebook continues to fail to boot. Called company Tech Support, went through two levels of support. They opened ticket for Local IT Tech.

Nov 4 - Local IT worked on notebook, confirmed defective hardware. New Motherboard shipped overnight. (Dell confirmed correct shipping address twice.)

Nov 5 - motherboard did not arrive. Checked with Dell - they shipped it to Florida instead of Tennessee after confirming correct shipping address twice. They will ship to "correct address" again...

Nov 6 - new motherboard arrived, too late for Dell Tech to travel to site today.

Nov 9 - Dell Tech arrived to install new motherboard. He had the old motherboard removed and new one in place in twenty minutes. Then he couldn't get the case back together. He broke the display latch and the palmpad trying to get the case reassembled. And he has one screw leftover (where does it go??!). New parts are on order again.

Nov 10 - waiting on parts for case. Unit has not been powered up on new motherboard.


At a former employer, the notebooks were all Toshiba, and many of us ragg'd Toshiba because they seemed to have a lot of problems. Then the company replaced the Toshibas with Dells, and in a short period of time we wanted the Toshibas back. They worked better than the Dells. The HP notebooks at the current employer are working well. My three-year-old HP was getting errors on the Fujitsu HD, and I replaced it with WD. The Dells here and at my wife's office seem to have regular trouble. I have a four-year-old Toshiba at home, and have had zero problems. There are some Sony VAIOs here at work that work well. I agree that since the Dells have a large population in the workplace, they may have more failures than other brands, and yet be a small percentage of failures.

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story continues........
Nov 10, 2009 11:29PM PST

Nov 10 - new parts arrived. A different Dell Tech came to reassemble the E6500. He was able to install the new parts and all hardware (screws and such). Notebook works as advertised.

Nov 11 - thus far, all is well. Notebook booted properly today.

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same error.
Feb 16, 2013 6:19AM PST

what was the new parts, that was installed on the second repair day?
i have the same problame, but the warianty has been expired, and i would like to repair my laptop.