AW M17r X4 - Windows 10 upgrade - drivers

Hi .

I upgraded to Win10 recently, and thought I'd tell you which drivers I used, because finding the right drivers was what took the most time:

I took the installation order from "Philip Yip" , who wrote a great guide on DELL and Windows 10 Upgrades, and I think this is the official order in which DELL installs the drivers, which can be found here: http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/table-of-contents/

First comes the BIOS. I could have upgraded to A13 from A11, but I didn't do that, because I wanted to keep the option of easily using the unlocked A11 version. It also runs stable and I have no problems with it. If you want to upgrade your BIOS, you'll find all official DELL drivers in all versions at the FTP-page of DELL: http://downloads.dell.com/published/Pages/index.html

Next in line would the Firmware Upgrades. The one for the DVD worked without problems, the one for the Seagate HD refused to install, and I had no patience to install it from a USB or CD. I also think, that the upgrade failed, because I already had the newest firmware, I think I remember that I upgraded it right after it got released.

Now the Chipset drivers:

http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/intel-chipset-software-installation-10-1-2-10-whql-download.html these Chipset drivers were newer than the ones I could find on the official Page from Intel, and they work flawlessly.

The next drivers I all took from the Intel page: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/do...Driver-for-Intel-7-Series-C216-Chipset-Family . You can also use the newer 2015 driver from Windows 10 itself, I don't think it will make any major difference, I just read somewhere, that the Intel drivers are faster.

For the Freefall Sensor, I took a very new driver from 2015 which was released for different Notebooks, it works without flaws on the M17rX4 though: http://www.dell.com/support/home/de...titude-e6230&languageCode=GE,EN&categoryId=CS

I installed this https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24779/Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-Intel-RST-RAID-Driver Intel RST driver. It's not the newest one available, but people reported that the newer versions of Intel RST interfered with the sleep-mode for HDs or SSDs. This one works and is bugfree afaik.
Installation can be a little tricky, sometimes one gets an error where the driver wants Net Frameworks, but Win 10 of course has Net Frameworks 4.5 which the driver demands, so I searched the net and found out, that it's possible to decompress the file with i. e. 7zip, and in the new folder, you'll find a 64 bit version. Right-click, compatibility tab, click "run for older versions of Windows" or something like that, then it installs correctly. It's possible, that the Windows driver is still used for SATA, so check the device-manager, choose SATA, update driver and I think that you can then choose the Intel SATA driver when you uncheck the "show compatible drivers" box.

The Management Engine I also took from Intel, it can be found here: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25095/Intel-ME-11-Management-Engine-Driver-for-Intel-NUC . Installed without problems afair.

For the Realtek Card Reader I also took the official driver from Realtek themselves: http://www.realtek.com.tw/Downloads...=25&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

If you have an ATI-Graphics card, this site will become your newest best friend: http://leshcatlabs.net/
If you have an Nvidia Card, read the forums first, I think there were great problems with the Nvidia drivers and our Aliens.

The Touchpad drivers also come from the developer: http://www.synaptics.com/en/drivers.php
Little tricky to install, go to device manager, choose the PS2 Mouse and choose update the driver, then show Windows where to find the 64 bit version of the Synaptics driver and install it.

If you have an Atheros ethernet card like me, take the driver from DELL themselves, there is no better one, only a newer one from Microsoft, but that one didn't work aswell as the 2013 version from DELL.

BT and WLAN I also took from Intel again, if you have different hardware, you need different drivers, the drivers for the centrino 2230 you find here: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25276/Intel-PROSet-Wireless-Software-for-Windows-8-1- and https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24268/Bluetooth-Intel-Bluetooth-drivers-for-Intel-NUC .

At last, install the OSD driver and the Command Center, take the newest Win 8 versions from the DELL site, they work perfectly on Win 10.


I hope this helped or will help all the M17 owners and also draw some attention to using very new drivers from the developers of the hardware, instead of the outdated DELL ones. All the best to you.

Seraiel

 

Thank you for posting this, it will be a big help.

 

You're welcome .