UPDATE:

Dell just called me back! Thats was BLOODY quick! only a couple of hours after sending an email!

They are sending me out a 3-pin plug AC adapter, which might hopefully give me better grounding.

Will see how that goes...

I just thought I'd test it again with the multimeter, so I did.
I put the red cord onto one of the screws on the wireless card, and the black one onto a ground node in an electrical outlet at home...I got 135 Volts AC ?????
That really seems to be dangerously much...

dont worry, theres no current, i tried touching it while holding an earth point...didnt feel a thing...but dont try it!

Okay, here's a question for you experts...I've had my M1710 since they first started sending them out (Feb/March of last year, maybe?)...anyhow, after all this time, NOTHING has gone wrong, to the point that I haven't even reformatted or reinstalled windows...and believe me, I game and punish the hell out of my box, tweaking all kindsa sh!t whenever I can! I've even overclocked the 7900 to 600/700 (pretty modest, actually, if you check the threads).

Anyhow, I just recently (last week or so) started getting the NMI blue-screen parity error...but ONLY occasionally, so it was darn near impossible to trouble-shoot...it doesn't happen that often, but enough to be annoying...this goes on for about two weeks, while I check the forums and try different 'cures'...it's difficult, because you have to wait in between each 'fix' to see if you actually 'fixed' it, since there's no way to trigger them.

I went so far as to call some Indian dude at Dell and tell him about it (he had no idea what I was talking about, and wanted me to run diagnostics, which I had already done)...anyhow, I settled for having him overnight me a WinXP/driver/diagnostics disc and was going to reinstall windows the next day.

Long story short, that night my main hard drive, a Seagate 120GB Momentus 7200RPM LESS THAN A YEAR OLD started making the clicking noises that indicate imminent death. This was JUST AFTER a random NMI freeze-up while composing an email. Shut down, reboot to try and recover as much as I can beofre it goes, and the drive is utterly toast...BIOS don't even see it anymore, FFS! I lost a lot of good data, but it could have been worse, since I've been backing up pretty regularly since the NMI thing started popping up.

QUESTION: I am buying a multimeter at RadioShack this weekend: could this 'stray voltage' problem have caused the NMI errors AND are they related to the inexplicable HD failure? Thanks for reading my book, but I'm pretty upset about the whole thing.

also, just today, the SHIFT keys stopped working to capitalize an 'A'...ONLY an 'A', though...everything else works fine with the SHIFT keys, but now I have to CAPS LOCK anytime I want to type a capital 'A'...If things keep deteriorating and I find huge amounts of stray voltage, I may push for a system exchange or something...have to PROVE it first, though, so can anyone answer my questions? I understand everything is pretty much just a guesstimate, now, until the EE gets back to ViriiGuy...

Well I do firmly believe that this stray voltage could be the cause of your NMI errors. I have seen the NMI errors on most of the laptops that have this problem. I firmly believe that the stray voltage can be the cause for several hardware failures. Stray voltages and electronics do not mix. Many of the componets inside your laptop are not designed to handle over 12 volts.

Now I do not think it is the cause of your hard drive. Simply because you say it is clicking. MOST of the time a clicking hard drive means head failure. The clicking sound you hear is actually the heads smacking against the platters inside your hard drive. This in laptops is usually cause by repeatedly being moved or shaken while on. However, with that said, it is possible that the stray voltage shorted out the IC chip that controls the head movement on your hard drive and has caused it to not remember where it should start and stop. But this is a very rare occurance, just not unheard of.

I do feel that a grounded adapter may be just what we need for these laptops and when I spoke to Dell early yesterday I suggested as much to them. However when I have mine serviced again, I will have it replaced and the new one shipped to me with a grounded adapter. The hidden internal damage will have already been started, due to the stray voltage.

Randy

the_scotsman, I do not have access to an ossiciliscope at the moment. Maybe you could throw the power adapter you have right now on it. I suspect that since these seem to be about the only common part betweent he 6400 and the 9400, maybe this is the culprit.

Thanks...good to know it was just a random fluke (or maybe me being too hard on my 1710 )...at least now I know that my new HD won't fail as well (as long as I don't turn it on and drop it down the stairs again, lol).

Correct me if I'm wrong, though, by 'grounded adapter', you mean a plug with three prongs, right? If so, all 1710's HAVE grounded adapters, as there are three progs both on the outlet and the adapter end of the cord. Don't know about 9400/6400, but since I'm getting NMI Parity errors with a grounded cord, that may not be the problem (unless maybe my computer's just particularly FUBAR'D).

Yea, the 6400/9400 only have 2 pronged plugs.

The new 3-pin one should be getting delivered to me today.

Its not a definate solution, only something Dell want me to try.

My E1705 seems to be uneffected, though it does have a 3 prong AC adapter.

SOLVED!

Received my 3-pin adapter and it HAS fixed the problem.

So its a simple solution, just gives the unit better grounding.

Good! I am glad to hear the grounded adapter does solve this problem. Seems like they need to supply the grounded adapter standard with all their laptops. Good job the_scotsman! I will get ahold of Dell in the morning and get some grounded adapters sent to my shop. I am still going to do periodic testing to make sure the problem will be completely gone.

Randy

I have noticed the same thing from the start when i had my adapter pluged in i noticed that feeling tinteling feeling at the back of my m1710 screen. And now after reading this threat i treid using a grounded socket that WORKED the tinteling feeling of the back of the screen was gone!! only the problem is i only have a few sockets with grounding most are without

will it damage my m1710 if i dont use the grounded sockets ????

Yea it very likely will.

i just connected a wire from the grounding to the a radiator in my house and its fixed so if i am not using a grounded socket ill just have to hook it up to something else.

I just spoke with the E.E. He confirms exactly what we have found here. The laptop needs a grounded adapter. Once the adapters are replaced with a grounded adapter, there will be no more shock. It appears to have been an oversight on Dell's part. They really should have sent a grounded adapter out with all these systems to start with.

So best bet, If you are not having hardware problems, jsut have Dell send you a grounded adapter from a M1710, problem solved.

Randy

I HAVE an M1710 with a grounded adapter, and still get occasional NMI errors...any insight? Should I try swapping to my wife's (identical) adapter for a few days? I know there are different 'revisions' of these things, and one of the older revisions already went bad on us, but that was a complete failure and not anything that would cause intermittent effects life NMI (to Dell's credit, they overnighted us a newer adapter with a 5-minute phone call...that was back when they had the Express XPS support Line, though, heh).