Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Ok then. If you with your previous post wanted to say that I opened up the system irresponsibly and played with the components having no idea what I was doing, then, thats not the case. I dont touch components if they otherwise work flawlessly.
The wifi card did work flawlessly, both at home with my asus rt-66u and at school, with no connectivity issues at all. I downloaded large files with stupidly high speeds with this one.

My theory is that that the msata somehow disturbed the wifi module because both are on the PCIe interface, but it could be anything, that's just what I think.

Let see what Dell do, I'm gonna send it in today. Lets just hope that I dont get the famous coil whine with a new motherboard replacement.

mr_handy, what cable are you talking about ? I did not remove any cable while installing the msata and 2.5" ssd, I just disconnected the battery. The msata slot was by the way empty with some kind of a yellow sticker on top that I had to remove to get access to the empty slot.

 

I wasn't implying that you didn't know what you're doing. Even people who know what they're doing occasionally make mistakes. And the fact that you didn't touch the WiFi card is irrelevant, because as you've already said, other WiFi cards don't work in your system either. However, I can absolutely imagine that it would be possible for someone to inadvertently do something while working on their system that would disrupt the M.2 slot's availability -- and that wouldn't even necessarily have to occur close to the slot itself.

As for your theory that the mSATA SSD "disturbed" the WiFi module, I don't even know what that means. First, several systems have both an mSATA SSD (including the one you use) and a WiFi module and are running just fine, and second, these SSDs/slots don't have a will of their own. But if you want to test a possible conflict from having both slots populated, try booting your system with the mSATA slot empty and see if the WiFi card comes back. Or I think you can even just check the BIOS to see whether the WiFi card is listed, no need to even boot an OS.

 

jphughan,

You mentioned you have a Cheat Sheet for Windows 7 install on the M3800. Can you reply and attach here so I can check it out as well as anyone who can use the help?

Rick

 

Here you go! I didn't include instructions for altering the Win7 install media to support UEFI booting (though the Dell media may already have that), but as I say in this sheet, UEFI on Win7 doesn't really mean much unless you intend to place your boot volume on a disk larger than 2TB.

View attachment Rebuild Instructions - M3800 Win7.pdf

 

So, I wandered away from this thread. Got my M3800 in January. I am happy with all things about it, except that the freeze after opening the lid and trying to get it to come out of other hibernation or sleep continues.

Madly swiping my finger in circles on the touchpad will usually revive it. But not always. And when it won't, the cursor moves around on command, but is frozen. and then I have to reboot. and it is a pain.

is there a driver fix or other way to solve this? thanks.
Erin C-H

 

I have a similar problem, and have been watching this forum to see if a solution gets mentioned.

I put my machine to sleep by pressing the power button. Go somewhere, open the lid, press the power button, the light comes on, as do the keyboard backlight. The screen never comes on, no beeps. If I press the power(short), it goes back to sleep, and if I re-press it comes back on and goes to the Windows 7 login screen. Always.

I have the A05 BIOS.

++Mark.

 

If the coil whine problem is still ongoing to this day and will rollover to new shipments then I probably won't buy this

 

Have you already disabled Intel Rapid Start and updated your GPU drivers?

 

Well love me or hate me, my problems with Dell have been resolved.

It took just 1 call to a certain Executive at Dell and within 1 day ALL of my problems were resolved. Yes, all of my problems were solved - including a cheque couriered same day to me. It's amazing how people will actually do something when someone within the Executive Offices at Dell is contacted. So this is a public thanks to those who offered to help me out with respect to my problems as well as a thanks to that executive re: M3800 purchases and returns. The nightmare is finally over.

 

Anyone else notice that fans come on more often with the latest BIOS A06 update. Or is it just me?