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Hello, it’s a notebook, it shouldn’t lock just because I plugged it in…

I have a Dell Latitude E6500 running Windows 7 64-bit with 8GB of RAM.  Window Experience Index is 5.4 – 6.1 across all categories except (alas) the graphics card which pulls it down to a 4.3.  Still, other than being a bit heavy and chewing through batteries it is a fast PC.  I need that for the business analytics I do at work (this is a work PC).

You think I’d be anything but fucked with such a sweet PC ride at work.  You’d think.

Unfortunately, this PC has provided me several reasons to blog – one of which I’d love a cure for (I’ve Google’d and Google’d to no avail).  All three are annoying given this is a notebook computer.

1. Randomly – no warning – no pattern – when I hook my notebook up to power the computer locks – freezes – dead.  No solution but to yank the power and the battery for a hard reset.  Seems like a hardware issue with the power connector / socket.  Solution? Paranoia and saving before I mess with the notebook’s power adapter.

2. The Dell Latitude E6500 docking station can handle a hot remove… but I can’t hot dock which means hibernating or suspending before I dock the computer.  Annoying.

3. This is the problem I could use help with ’cause I don’ t think there is anything to be done about 1 & 2.  When I use sleep (instead of hibernate) my computer will wake-up in my computer back overnight, completely draining the battery (and getting very hot in the process) and ending up dead in the water in the morning.  As a result I avoid sleep mode – annoying.  I’ve looked for network adapters that wake up, scheduled tasks, power settings – anything that could wake up the PC.  Nothing.  My wife and daughter’s HP notebooks don’t act this way.  Help?

There you go – three tales of notebook woe courtesy of Dell’s minions.

This entry was posted on October 30, 2009 at 4:35 am and is filed under Microsoft Windows with tags , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Hello, it’s a notebook, it shouldn’t lock just because I plugged it in…”

  1. Jason Says:
    January 9, 2010 at 4:17 am

    I had the issue to #3 and figured out my specific problem. I configured my computer with a boot password and Windows password. In Advanced Power Settings, my computer was set to go into hibernation after X hours. So at night I’d put my computer into sleep mode, and then a few hours later, it would try to go into hibernation. The problem is that the computer prompted me for the boot password, and because I was sleeping, would wait for the boot password until it drained the battery. I set the computer to never go into hibernation, and the battery has never drained since.

    Reply

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