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Who doesn't love spoofs!? This laugh out loud spoof of the popular demon and ghost movies and TV shows of the decade will have you rolling on the floor! I was able to pick out all the recent horror movies and really enjoy the hilarious spin that was put on them. Anyone born in the 80's, 90's or 2000's who has been a fan of scary movies or their 'spoofs' will surely enjoy this one, too. Whether you enjoy the popular TV show Ghost-hunters, or remember the legendary story of the Blair Witch Project, this movie will no doubt tickle your Funny Bone Demon.
Take a chance on this small, independently made spoof of modern scary movies. It's 'Mockumentary' style makes the film resemble a lot of the modern movies and television shows. If you're a fan of the Office or any ghost documentaries, you should love this.
Top Device:Our initial experience occurred in Atlanta, Georgia - Southeast USA where the unit originally shipped to, and it was deployed up into Minneapolis, Minnesota - upper Midwest USA, before we identified that there was a real problem.There were a couple of random latchups that occurred during software installation (which we - incorrectly - blamed on install packages), but there were only a couple, and it ran fine for hours afterward. We have never seen a BSOD. This was also the unit that had memory installed by Dell under the keyboard in slots C & D, rather than in the correct slots A & B under the bottom cover. Didn't make any difference, but there is obviously some build out variability in Dell's production.The only other detail that comes to mind is that the latest nVidia driver has desktop transparency issues with SolidWorks, forcing us to go back a revision. If Dell can address the freeze issue, w/o crippling the machine, we will be happy (and tired) campers.We still suspect that this is a power management issue, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, removing DPM, flashing BIOS to A06, and updating everything we could find (meaning MSWIN Update, and Dell support posted drivers), as well as disabling every single power management setting we could find, greatly minimized the freezing.
![Flauto Lark M4800 Flauto Lark M4800](/uploads/1/2/4/0/124097390/186923967.jpg)
THE next step for us will be to disable C states in BIOS to see if that has any effect.probably get to that when we get the unit back in house next month.but Dell needs to fix this issue w/o effectively killing power management, because that is one of the major features of a laptop, that it can run on a battery for a reasonable time. Disabling C states is a diagnostic step, not a solution.Does anyone at Dell care to refresh us on the status of this issue? @TopDevice I'm in California and received the laptop in late October 2013 - I imagine all of these are put together in the same place and if so perhaps the time they were assembled could be the clue? Could Dell still possibly be sending out bad units? I would hope not!@ET& Natedogg Thanks for your comments! Hello frustrated DELL customers.I have owned Dell mobile workstations for over 10 years (for MAYA and PSD) and was about to buy the M4800 till I too found this thread.
Not very encouraging, nor are Dell's sporadic responses. I am holding off for a few weeks to see how this goes. I wish you guys all the best on resolving this and hope to find that youve just been unlucky. I see no other threads but this one on this subject.The fact that QHD and optimus are not compatible is a real downside too. Is the FHD screen really that bad?
How does it compareto previous Precision FHD screens. Eg on the M4400?I have been a loyal Dell customer for years and was very clear I would buy from Dell again. However I hear customer services has now been moved from UK to India, which means possibly dealing with someone whose first language may not be English, and their understanding of UK culture could be compromised too. I have no issue with dealing with anyone from any background, but this can effect subtleties of communication and so rapidity and smoothness of resolutions.I am now considering a BOXX 1920 or better, a Thinkpad w540 or an HPEliteBook 8570w.I was considering an XPS15 too, but I have also heard that the Dell XPS15 has a critical design flaw which means meltdown on the motherboard is likely within the 1st 2 years. All this is putting me off Dell very quickly. If you are interested in the XPS15 issues further details can be found through this post:'Guys, I'm an XPS 15 user. My xps got fried after using it for 1.5years.
Let me warn you. Don't buy a xps if it has a nvidia graphicscard in it.
The nvidia cards in all xps laptops are faulty in design.and they will last only for maximum of 2 years (just as mine did). When igoogled, i saw many frustrated users like me.
Here's the proof -.just think about it. After the problem starts, you will have to callthe dell customer care, and they will tell you to replace themotherboard (because u can't just replace the graphics card, since it isintegrated to the motherboard) for another 8000 rs!! The main part is -this new replacement motherboard will also be having the faulty nvidiagraphics card in it, and you can use the laptop again for another 2years max!!!! SO GUYS- THINK a 100 times before deciding on laptopswith nvidia graphics cards.' Top Device:My M4800 was delivered to the state of Ohio in the United States of America as was the replacement M4800. Both failed after disability the C-State with BIOS A05. I never tried A06 (since it was not available at the time) nor did I try disabling Dell's Power Management, but I did disable the sleep mode and always ran on AC.My lockups occurred when I just copied a large data set (about 150 GB) from a Network shared folder to a USB 3.0, 3 TB Hard Drive attached to the M4800 USB port.
I also tried copying the 150 GB data to the local hard drive and that failed too. Lastly, I tested:1) with only factory installed software, and2) with installing Windows 7 Operating System patches and the Intel Rapid Store driver that Dell techs had me change.No joy on any configuration.I have since returned the 2 M4800's. I would have loved to have kept my M4800 because I really liked the specs.
But I needed it to be reliable, and I could tell early on by the symptoms (and later from this thread) that this lockup issues was no ordinary 'install a new driver' problem. So, I returned the M4800 and the replacement Dell had sent me.Best of luck to all.
Just a quick update:I installed all updates last night and the system survived.First started by using a firmware/driver app from Seagate's website to check the disk and it reported I had the latest (so some of us shipped with old drivers?).Did a 'urgent' Nvidia driver update first and decided it to do it via Windows Update to test to see if the Dell Client System update app would later detect that I had already installed it. I was concerned about the different driver update results that the app reported vs the Dell support website (set to my Dell Service Tag) which reported none of the things the app found.The driver installed fine and when I reran check updates on the Dell System Update app it did indeed detect it so the app seems stable for me (I read others had trouble even with that). Seems the Dell support site is buggy though in reporting about drivers to update.Next I installed are recommended driver updates minus the BIOS - it was 6 updates total. These took close to 10 minutes of heavy churning, hot fan blowing and boot cycle to install.
Afterwards used the computer to surf around for a while, checking even log, and seems stable. Noted I no longer see any of the WHEA-Logger errors which maybe were CPU driver related.Lastly I installed the A06 BIOS update and that too went fine. It did indeed fix the empty DVD drive seek noise issue. Again ran some more diagnostics to give the system a workout (using the MyDell app which I reinstalled) and everything reported passed (for what that's worth)However, not knowing the true definitive root cause(s) of these issues all of this may not mean much but we'll see after another work week under my usual routine. It seems like some people have units that are way 'sicker' than mine, or perhaps it could be the different ways we use the system, or a whole other combination of random factors that Dell has not fessed up to or don't know themselves.For now my system seems 'healthy' with a good fast boot cycle and a bit cleaner event log so we'll see. I really want it to work as I too really like the specs and good performance of the system (when it's in a good mood and behaves).The only slightly annoying thing it is still doing is on boot up sometimes (maybe 1/3 of the time) the speakers make a static/farting noise when the windows start up theme plays.
It actually did this the very first time I started up the computer in the office in November, with my MacBook coworkers watching, so it seems it does still like to mock me by farting in my face and embarrassing me;) Has anyone else had this issue?I've also had performance reports running with the 'Dell Precision Performance Optimizer' and I just upped the frequency of the logs to help with any future troubleshooting - has anyone used this app and is it good for anything? Just had my M4800 returned after call from Dell Tech Support on Friday telling me it was being returned, but the system had not been tested with the OS running (again!!).New Mobo, New Screen.Powered up the M4800, The optical drive seek issue occurring even before I logged in.This is just sloppy service, now at least though the Dell Client Update is working, so I'm letting that find and install whatever it can find before making the decision to return the laptop again, though I really don't know what I'm burning even more time on this. Narcil, so much of service today is dependent on a) computerized tools that identify and log a problem, or failing that, b) blindly swapping out components in the hope that the problem goes away. Anyone who has owned a new vehicle in the past ten years is probably familiar with this. How often has the owner of a new vehicle been told that 'we hooked up to the computer and it said the vehicle has no problems, so we put in a new xxx. Give it a try.'
Diagnostic skills are a dying art because margins are so thin, that companies can't afford to spend the time it takes to figure out what the problem is. Hey guys,I read some user comments regarding their M4800 as I was checking on the internet to see what is going on with my M6800, which fantastically is the same issue as you all are facing!I still don't know what is going on but I have my laptop freezing, doing werid noises on my DVD drive and crashing when it turns off the screen when not used.I saw that many of you is from USA and as I see the problem is not in only one country, I bought my laptop and got it straight from the factory in hong kong and brought it to china where I currently live. Received my new Dell M6800 one week ago, located in Minnesota, USA. The machine was a new pre-build:Intel Core i7-4800MQ/ Windows 7 Pro/ 8GB DDR3L/ 500GB Hybrid/ AMD Video.Have been experiencing approximately two freezes and two black screens per day, usually at idle.
Arrived at this site via Google, looking to see if others were having a problem. Not too happy to discover that the problem has been ongoing with no end in sight. Will call Dell tomorrow. Lots of wasted time loading programs and transferring files.
Except for the mentioned problems, I really loved the machine. Flieger,Go ahead and DM with your service tag. I'll seewhat I can do for you.Community:I've heard of a few lockup cases that wereresolved by uninstalling the factory installed Mcafee. It hasn't worked foreveryone but it's worth a try if you already have not done so.No new updates. We're still waiting for systemsto be received at engineering. I'm still testing the few units that I have inmy own lab and I have more on the way to test. I know of a customer that received2 M4800s about 3 weeks ago.
No lockups since he took them out of the box. Oneof my other customers has had 1 M4800 for about 2 months. I've followed up withhim multiple times after his case was closed and he still hasn't had anylockups. He formatted and re-installed Windows 7 as soon as he received it though.I'll be in touch! No factory installed AV here either. Freezes occurred before, during and after AV installed. There was a freeze during AutoCAD installation, there have even been freezes at the Windows START menu w/o anything running but the OS (and whatever drivers came from the Dell site.This past weekend, there was a freeze while throwing a group of relatively small files up to a dropbox.
There is no common thread we can identify (except that it has to be on). So far, that's the only stable state of the machine - off. If McAfee or any other software were the problem, you would see an entry in the System Event logs.
These lockups never cause an entry to appear in the System Event logs. So, the root cause is not software. The cause is a firmware or hardware design issue. This kind of problem is hard to determine what the root cause is without special tools. It is likely a race condition involving more than one subsystem where a subsystem is not responding in a way that the system expects.
And the system is just waiting for the response, which never comes (i.e., lockup). 4 days and no freeze or BSOD so far. I installed a VM running a simulation package to stress the system, opened and closed the lid (hibernate) still no issue.
Dell Client System update now works (previously it didn't recognize the system so Dell changed something that made a difference).Re-installed the OS from the partition, then Office and the usual essentials. Now letting it go through its updates.One change was the system does not stutter anymore, I remembered from an old issue with an XPS that this could be caused by the dell laser mouse, so now using a standard MS mouse, (ok maybe random, but I thought I'd mention it).Optical drive seek still happening & still annoying. Stuffing a DVD in the slot to shut it up seem to have the same effect as a baby dummy.Fingers crossed that some progress has been made.