Dell XPS 13 2015 Skylake Infinity Display Owners Thread

Still pretty great performance. Faster than the Samsung drive more commonly seen, I believe.

Speedstep was disabled when I benchmarked my system which is sure to have given it a slight boost. I have since turned it back on since I saw no real-world difference despite what the benchmarks said. The XPS 13 is a rocket in everyday use.

 

I just got this USB-C charger from Lenovo that works well for me. At work I use with a tniy Aukey USB-C dock/hub with USB-C PD passthrough and HDMI, USB ports, so I only need one cable to connect at work.

https://www.redcorp.com/en/product/...novo-usb-c-45w-ac-adapter-4x20e75135/m852ej61

Now I am looking for a small USB-C extension cable to hide the hub away

This hub:

 

I got this extension cable and it works great:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DNCMSXS

 

I'm surprised to see these on Amazon, since USB-C extension cables aren't allowed by the spec. I hope you read this reviewer's comment at least:

 

I did and I'm not using it for power delivery, just to move the HDMI/USB adapter a little out of the way.

(edit: you make a good point though. Besides the power issue, these may or may not work - or last)

 

Can you make a small list of the drivers installed from the Microsoft, Samsung and Intel sites?

 

Release of XPS 13 9350 1.4.10 BIOS

22. Nov. 2016

Fixes & Enhancements
Fixes
1. Correct Storage information in the Pre-boot Diagnostic test
2. Improve BIOS Recovery feature
3. System stability during Sleep

Enhancements
- Not Applicable.


Installed, screen stays black for 2 minutes at the end of the update.
Don't get nervous.
Bios includes USB-C and Intel ME Firmware update.

 

Thanks for the heads-up. The black screen would unnerve me so it's good to know what to expect.

 

Thanks for the info. I did notice some BSODs when waking from sleep, so hopefully this BIOS update fixes that. I shall test once I get my laptop back from dell repairs(Zzz).

 

This bios works great for me! It fixed the issue with almost every restart not coming past the dell logo to see the spinner and OS load.
I have a SM951 SSD and have had troubles for a long time with that. Super happy.

Maybe sleep feels more stable too.

 

Is it possible to bypass the dell logo on boot? It stays for quite a bit showing the logo before it gets to the windows logon screen.

 

No. It's actually two parts, first the BIOS loading. Then Windows loading, it just happens that Dell makes it look uniform by having replaced the Windows loading image with the same Dell image. You can't skip loading the BIOS or Windows, for obvious reasons.

 

How we supposed to scroll in edge browser? Using 2 or 1 finger? Using 1 finger, sometimes it detect as double tap and resulting zoom in

But using 2 fingers is more difficult to scroll

And anybody try using like adonit jot stylus? I tried using the cheap rubber iPad stylus and the sensitivity is not good

 

Hi, can we just replace the touch bar driver to windows driver? Do you have the link for the driver? How about the touchscreen driver?

 

I tried the Adonit Jot Stylus and thought it worked poorly - you have to get the disc full face on for it to work properly and sensitivity didn't seem very good. 2-finger scroll on the trackpad works fine for me.

 

Thanks for the heads up, and the scroll thing I meant for the touch screen, my fault wasn't clear, for touch pad after scroll sometime jump if not careful

 

My trackpad was super jumpy when i first bought the laptop. I installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 Pro last week and now the trackpad's great! Also, it was overheating/fan running all the time and that's fixed as well. No more bloatware!

 

Yes I think windows 10 is improved somehow,how about the touchscreen scrolling? Do you experience accidental double tap?

 

I have no issues with accidental double-tapping with the trackpad. A clean windows install usually fixes most of the software issues.

 

Is there a way to get rid of the coil whine aside from getting the motherboard replaced?
It is sometimes unbearable and very eivdent when plugged into a 4K monitor.
The whine is loudest when scrolling down and up.

 

I'm not sure that coil whine is hardware...

I've that after a driver update..
I don't remember which one..

But I'm sure about this.. If I came back to previous versions, I don't have coil whine...

But the system shows me always the update notification and I decided to update again...

Inviato dal mio HUAWEI VNS-L31 utilizzando Tapatalk

 

Not in the trackpad but in the touchscreen using edge

 

I installed BIOS update 1.4.10 and experienced three BSODs (blue screen of death). Anyone else with this problem on the new BIOS? Hoped it would fix the random wake up issue, but computer woke up at night two as well after update.

 

I installed the new BIOS a couple of days ago without any problems during or after. Have you checked what is causing the BSOD?
I fixed my wake up problem a long time ago, by disabling hibernation.

Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

 

Installed Windows SDK debugger and followed instructions here:
www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Analyze-a-BSOD-Crash-Dump/
Supposedly a memory corruption... strange, might try to install BIOS again. Any other idea?

Did you deactivate hibernate with this command:
powercfg.exe /hibernate off
Supposedly, this deactivates fast boot of Win10, but I guess with the SSD it doesn't really matter too much. How about battery drain on S3 standby, how long does it last? I've played around with the hibernate (S4) issue, sometimes it works, sometimes it seems like it wakes up from S3 to change to S4 and then can't go back to sleep -> insomnia. I guess I'll go to the pharmacy tomorrow.

 

That's how I disabled hibernate and I had already turned off fast start - my problems with uncommanded wake from sleep went away.

 

Mine had a lot of coil whine until I replaced the OEM Toshiba PCIe SSD with a Samsung SM951 NVMe SSD. It hasn't reoccurred over several weeks once since then.

 

Anybody trying windows ink workspace ? I found out that sticky notes cannot accept drawing from touchscreen, only keyboard input

And the sketchpad app, is always display this picture sketch that is default from sketch app and cannot replace it with my sketch (weird)

Anybody experience the same?

 

Just tested it on my XPS 13 since I had installed the Huion tablet drivers and I can confirm your results.

 

I recently discovered that whenever I connect my Dell USB-C adapter I get the following message and the USB from the adapter only provides power (I can charge my phone from it, but can't get any USB devices to work with it).
I have updated the Thunderbolt firmware and controller driver to the newest versions, but with no luck..

Are there any others having the same problem?

 

I can now confirm that the bouncing and jumping problem was a hardware issue. For me, at least.

To review, most of the scrolling issues with the touchpad have been resolved by software updates. However, the problem of the screen randomly bouncing and jumping when I stop scrolling stubbornly persisted. I tried everything, including the Synaptics driver and the clean install mentioned above. Nothing worked.

Since my warranty was about to expire, I decided to have the touchpad replaced in a last ditch attempt to resolve the problem. I'm pleased to report it seems to have worked! It's been two weeks since I got my XPS 13 back -- enough time for the problem to reappear -- and the touchpad works like a charm.

If you've tried every software solution like me, and are at your wits end like I was, I urge you to send it in to have the touchpad replaced. Wish I'd done so months ago.

 

That is good news. I just got my XPS 13 and like everything about it except for the fidgety touchpad. Based on your post, I am thinking about sending it in for the touchpad replacement as well. How long did it take for Dell turnaround your computer?

Thanks!

 

Once your RMA is approved:

Dell overnights a box via fedex.

You pack your laptop in the box per the instructions as well as the charger. Inside the box includes a form for you to fill out, some tape to close the box, and a prepaid shipping label(usually fedex ground).

Drop package off at fedex and wait 5-7 days usually.

Dell gets your package. 1 day for processing, and 2-4 days to fix/replace parts.

Laptop gets shipped via Fedex ground back to you, which is another 5-7 days.

Overall pretty painless but Fedex Ground is a little bit on the slow side.

 

If you have premium warranty, Dell will send a technician to your place. If instead you decide to send it in for repair, Dell will FedEx overnight a shipping box to you. Once packed and dropped off at a FedEx location, it'll be overnighted to Texas. It's usually a day or two to diagnose and repair, but Dell Engineering may put a hold for up to three days for further troubleshooting. Once that's done, it'll be sent overnight back to you.

 

It was fast. After I contacted warranty support, they immediately fed-exed me a package overnight. The turnaround was ten days exactly from when I dropped off my computer at fed-ex to when I had it back in my hands -- and this was over Thanksgiving. The support person was really great, updating me on the status of my repair and answering all my questions.

 

I'm happy to say that despite not having the premium warranty, I shipped my laptop to Dell Canada on a Monday afternoon and had it back by Wednesday evening. Pretty impressive turnaround, especially for a motherboard replacement.

I'll go with the onsite warranty next time. I didn't even realize that it was an option when I purchased my 9350.

 

I'm kind of wishing I had gone for the tech-comes-to-my-place option. My laptop went in for repair, came back with more coil whine than before (battery and motherboard replaced, but not due to coil whine). The good news is that I got rid of almost all the whine by disabling the C-state in BIOS. The bad news is that when I opened the laptop to fix a newly misaligned touchpad (it was slight, but bugged the hell out of me), I found that a screw attaching the battery was almost stripped. I mean, how difficult and expensive can it be to replace that one screw at Dell? Has Dell run out of screws?

If the tech came over, I bet more time and care will be spent, since I'm going to be hovering over him/her during the repair...

 

I feel like the definitely has to do with the graphics chip.... I replaced my ssd the day I got it with a Samsung unit too and I have the coil whine. I'm mostly used to it now. I don't like sending my computer out for repairs when this is a known and documented problem that most likely won't be fixed with a mobo replacement and will likely come back with more problems!!!

The touchpad scroll issue is still a pain though. Mine zooms in while scrolling

 

I think the pinch-to-zoom is too sensitive. I disabled that by going to regedit, finding all values of 'ZoomEnabled', and setting them to '0'. That seems to stop it for me. I usually use something like Ctrl-scroll up/down for zooming, that might be application specific.

I suspect the coil whine is a result of a poorly designed motherboard. The components that attach to it, such as the graphics chip and CPU, can contribute to the effect. It definitely is possible to design the motherboard layout so that the coil whine doesn't show up (because many laptops don't whine), it's just that Dell either hasn't figured out how, or can't be bothered.

 

I only get coil whine if I don't have the minimum CPU set to 5% in the power plan. If I do that, the laptop is absolutely silent for me, but if I set the plan to high performance, it's terrible

 

I've had my motherboard switched out twice now and the coil whine persists. A bit of a bummer.

 

I sent pictures of the problematic screws to Dell after the repair. Here's the worst one (it's supposed to be a Philips head):



Dell support is going to send a bunch of replacement screws.

I think, if the Kaby Lake motherboard looks just like SkyLake's, I'm going to say that Dell tech/engineering doesn't really care. Must be that XPS 13 issues aren't hitting Dell's bottomline much...

 

A few new drivers and a BIOS update just released:

XPS 13 9350 1.4.12 BIOS
Fixes-
1. Support Apple USB Type-C Monitor.
2. Update PXE boot support for DA200.
3. Update LED status during BIOS recovery.

 

And I just updated to the 1.4.10 yesterday...

Let us know if any issues arise with the new bios.

 

On 1.4.12 for a few hours now, everything seems stable.

1. The new motherboard had 1.4.4 on it. Using this USB-C HDMI adapter ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YT6NT22/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1), the laptop screen would flicker every now and then. That seems to have gone away with 1.4.12. (Later: nope, not entirely) (Yet later: looks like unplugging and plugging in the USB-C cable resolved this)

2. The new Dell Bluetooth driver installation failed. Looking at the log, the return code was not recognized. It looks like the new driver version is 12.0.1.750, which also shows up as the driver in Device Manager. Maybe the installation of vendor software worked, it's just that Dell's wrapper program messed up. Later: looks like we can extract, then run Setup, which avoids the Dell wrapper.

 

Would anyone mind sharing what their max battery capacity is at now and when you got yours? I got mine in Nov 2015 and my max battery capacity is already down to 42978 mWh. My battery life has been **** for a while now and I'm pretty pissed off, especially since the warranty is done.

 

Got mine at the same time and mine's at 52k, down from 57k.

 

For those XPS 13 (9350) users expecting their thunderbolt ports to run at full speed

 

I have xps 9350 i7 6560U QHD with Iris 540 graphics card. I hate dynamic display control!! After googling for hours I downloaded the Dell driver：

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=PWD5K

It first said my Intel driver is not correct and indicated two versions (both cannot be installed on x64 system - both are x32). I double confirmed I have the most current intel HD driver installed (20.19.15.4531). The DBC driver was release in 2015 and has not been updated since then! Now the driver stopped working!

What should I do? Should I use an older version Intel driver (how to roll back)? It feels depressing to spend hours trying to disable this stupid feature.

 

Can someone tell me what clock their GPU (the HD 520) idles at, by checking e.g. with HWiNFO? Recently my battery life hasn't been great, and I suspect it's because I installed the graphics driver from Dell. Can't get the wattage to drop below 6W anymore, whereas 3 used to be normal for total idle. CPU is not the problem though.

Edit: Manually updated to the newest driver from the Intel HP, and everything's fine again. Just in case anybody else has this problem.