Dell XPS 15 L501 *Owner's Lounge*

Well then, that makes me think that it is something that can be fixed.

That'll work for me cause I really do like this laptop other than a few small things that can be fixed hopefully. Wouldn't want to take a chance on a full replacement.

1. hinges
2. cd tray
3. subwoofer

That's about it and this will be a perfect laptop!

 

Hi I'm new to this forum, but concerned about the temp of my new XPS 15.

When you say Idle temp, does that mean running nothing, just leaving at the desktop? Or does it include doing light tasks, like web browsing?

The reason I ask is when I leave it at the desktop I get temps around 50 degrees, but when I start web browsing the temp reaches a much higher 70 degrees.

 

Idle is when you are not running any application at all.
Anyway there are some system processes, applications and antivirus running in background, and the most of the time the operating system is performing some activity, for our practical purpose we can say that it is idle (for our XPS) anyway.

Try to browse plain HTML pages and the some intensive flash video pages, like Youtube or Vimeo, and check if you have any difference.

 

So is 70 degrees when browsing the web normal for the I7-740QM processor?

 

My opinion is that a Idle temp is exactly as you said it. Setting at the desktop. 50 is high for just that IMO

If your temps are in Celsius then 70 is high for only browsing.

 

Yes it's in Celsius. What temps do other people with the I7 processor get when web browsing?

 

Really? Do you actually get this much, or is this the reading shown by Dell's Battery Meter?

Anyway, I have made the necessary changes in the settings, as per your suggestions - fingers crossed . 5 hours would be a blessing.

I noticed some discrepancy between the reading of Dell's Battery Meter and BatteryBar. I think Battery Meter was more accurate.

UPDATE ON FAN & CPU WHINE

I have updated the BIOS to A04. The fans no longer remain continously on, though they turn on quite often, even when I am just browsing the net and reading texts. When they become active, they stay on for a while, venting out hot air.

On the other hand, I can still hear the CONSTANT CPU whine, which is annoying.

UPDATE ON TEMP

My system is very cool on the surface, hardly ever gets uncomfortably warm. When it does get warm, it's the left hand palm rest.

 

Hey there,

It's not through any battery meter program as I find them inaccurate. This was through real world testing. I was studying for exams in school and was in a place without a power outlet. When I reached about 20% (5 hrs into use) I switched to extended battery mode and cranked out another 1.5 hrs before battery reach critical levels. Also note that for about 2 hrs I had the screen off while torrents were downloading in the background and I was listening to music. The display is the biggest drain on the battery by far. Also make sure to check msconfig to disable unneeded background processes.

In terms of fan, it should activate when required and if it's venting out hot air then it's doing its job. Generally the fan isn't the issue but the thermal paste might be of poor quality. Right now my laptop has been on for about 7 hrs and been watching a few lectures via VLC + word processing + PDF + torrents and I'm at 32c CPU, 54c GPU (VLC uses the GPU) and 45c HDD.

The HDD is right underneath the left hand palm rest which explains why it gets warm there.

Out of curiosity, do you notice your system vibrates in that area (as the HDD disk spins). Also, do you have your power settings to Balanced?

 

fungied, do you have the i5?
32C is crazy low if you're running i7.

 

Definitely i5 my friend. =P

 

I have been surfing, in 10 minutes form now, 5 hours and my battery meter is showing 1:25 min remaining. I don't know if it will make it quite that long but for sure 5 hour's is a easy mark to make when only surfing. My power plan is set to Dell with what ever settings they shipped it with.

 

whoa..ur i5 is damn cool la...im getting 50 for the idle temp

 

I have an order in for a XPS 14 but I am having second thoughts. I think I would be better off with the better GPU and Blue Ray drive even if it means the machine is a touch larger.

Does anyone know when the 1080 screens will be back for order in the US?

 

after browsing and playing boxee for a few hours, the bottom between RAM and the touch pad, where south bridge chip is located (close to the tuner/wifi) is very warm, not confortable at all. I open the back panel and touch the aluminum heat sink. it is VERY hot (heatsink for Intel south bridge chip). I have i5

Dell should have used copper instead of aluminum for better heat conduct and transfered to the fan more efficient.

 

Not sure if you will actually get that much.

Battery Meter on my XPS right now showed that it will last another 7hr 14 min with 93% charge remaining. BatteryBar estimates it to be 3.54 hrs with 92.6% remaining.

As I am finishing typing - Battery Meter is showing 6hr 35min with 92% remaining, and BatterBar 3.52 hrs with 92% remaining.

So, I guess it's a variable estimation and we need to take them with a pinch of salt. [may be I should take back my earlier comment that Battery Meter was more accurate].

 

Hello guys,
I already posted about this but anyways, has anyone experienced high temps with the graphics card ?? Mine reached 90 while watching a 1080p movie. All the other temps are normal except for the graphics. Also it seems to crash (i mean a system shutdown) when i play any games
btw the config is
i7 740QM
6GB RAM
2GB GT435M
640GB @ 7200rpm

 

I bought my machine two days back on Saturday, and I have noticed a small problem, i do not know if it is small.....because this is my first laptop

The silver lining that surrounds the keyboard at the bottom is slightly risen at the right most corner, the gap is not that much and it is around three inches long... I have noticed it today only...... other than that it looks awsome.

Any suggestions what to do???? all help will be greatly appreciated

thanks in advance...

 

Are you Singaporean by any chance? Your 'la' is certainly very distinctive in this forum

 

Erm...sry for the english...actly...im Msian

 

What are the GPU temps when the XPS is in idle? And the temperature when playing games?
Use GPUZ and log temps while u are playing, then review them after a reboot in case your computer crashes during the game.

 

Take the laptop back and ask for a replacement. A new computer should be in perfect condition, including being correctly assembled.

 

I7 740QM:

CPU: 41-46 C depending on core
GPU: 43 C

Running: Chrome, Spotify, Msn and outlook

Fans running, so this temperature is quite low.
It usually is a little above 50 C for both when running the said programs.

 

My laptop is now frequently showing a lot of Blue Screen errors off late. Today was the last straw, so I downloaded Whocrashed, a software that analyzes the BSOD dump files to tell you what caused the problem.

On Mon 12/13/2010 8:29:16 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\121310-13696-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: afd.sys (afd+0x25FA)
Bugcheck code: 0x3B (0xC0000005, 0xFFFFF88001AED5FA, 0xFFFFF8800E22DA60, 0x0)
Error: SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\afd.sys
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock
Bug check description: This indicates that an exception happened while executing a routine that transitions from non-privileged code to privileged code.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.
The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system which cannot be identified at this time.


On Mon 12/13/2010 8:29:16 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\memory.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: afd.sys (afd+0x25FA)
Bugcheck code: 0x3B (0xC0000005, 0xFFFFF88001AED5FA, 0xFFFFF8800E22DA60, 0x0)
Error: SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\afd.sys
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock
Bug check description: This indicates that an exception happened while executing a routine that transitions from non-privileged code to privileged code.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.
The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system which cannot be identified at this time.


On Thu 12/9/2010 12:07:28 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\120910-15334-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: afd.sys (afd+0x25FA)
Bugcheck code: 0x3B (0xC0000005, 0xFFFFF88001A8B5FA, 0xFFFFF88009E3EA60, 0x0)
Error: SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\afd.sys
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock
Bug check description: This indicates that an exception happened while executing a routine that transitions from non-privileged code to privileged code.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.
The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system which cannot be identified at this time.


On Sat 12/4/2010 11:09:20 AM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\120410-16770-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: afd.sys (afd+0x25FA)
Bugcheck code: 0x3B (0xC0000005, 0xFFFFF880040475FA, 0xFFFFF8800F39EA60, 0x0)
Error: SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\afd.sys
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock
Bug check description: This indicates that an exception happened while executing a routine that transitions from non-privileged code to privileged code.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.
The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system which cannot be identified at this time.

It has been isolated as a afd.sys driver file problem. Unfortunately, I don't know what driver I should mess with to get rid of the problem. Any help?

 

My Advice, Try a full restore from the Hidden restore partition, uninstall bloatware, and run memtest (or diagnostic tool from BIOS).

 

anyone managed to get adobe premiere cs5 mercury engine hardware acceleration up an running with the nvidia 420m? (unlock guide here: http://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5.htm) i manage to get past the gpusniffer test, but the option to enable hardware acceleration is greyed out in premiere. i think i need the new nvidia drivers, but no chance installing them. anyone managed to install modified drivers?

 

Just wondering, do you guys keep your battery in when you're plugged in for a long time? I usually keep mine out because for some reason I feel like the battery would wear faster

 

No you don't need to. Once the battery is fully charged, the power supply to the battery is cut off and the laptop runs on AC power. No harm to the battery.

 

And you do have the option to prevent the battery from charging in the battery menu.

 

So that in effect means that you don't need to disable charging from the dell battery meter option if this is the case?

I was wondering about this as when the battery is charged at 100%, it shows as being idle which is the same status as when you disable charging using the dell battery power option.

So my guess is that the laptop automatically cuts the power when the battery is 100% charged which eliminates the need to use the "disable charging " option.

 

Is anyone using IE9 on this laptop when watching youtube videos?

The videos run fine but when I select the 720P or 1080P option the video stops playing and I can just hear the sound.

I am using Flash Player Square for IE 64 bit.

Can anyone try this and let me know if they experience the same problem in IE9 and youtube?

 

But I think that the battery stays in the fully charged status so long. Once it gets to 99% it recharges to 100% and those short charges are not that good for a battery. But I'm not really sure about that. It was the case with old devices but maybe new laptops don't do that.

 

Disable hardware acceleration for flash. Also, IE9 uses hardware acceleration in the browser by default. You might want to turn this off because it interferes with Optimus and sometimes renders webpages like crap.

 

Dell sent out a technician with a new wireless card and a new motherboard. When the technician opened the machine, he discovered there was a wireless card installed. He replaced the card and the system did not recognize the new card. We talked about replacing the motherboard but I was reluctant to do considering everything else was working so well. He mentioned that some machines had a place in the bios to enable certain cards. I went into the bios and sure enough there was a place to enable the wireless card and it was not enabled. I enabled it and then everything began to work.

Last Friday I spend 1.5 hours online with Dell tech support and went through everything. They never mentioned the bios. I can't believe it is not in their checklist.

 

Not sure what you mean, are you saying that the battery is still being charged at 100% if you don't select the "disable charge" option whilst plugged in?

 

You don't need to worry so much. Lithium ion batteries are designed to not accept anymore charge after getting fully charged. The supply to the battery is cut off by the motherboard and the laptop runs solely on AC power when connected. It mostly has nothing to do with software.

Read this link for more info.

Dell Official Site: Laptop Battery FAQ | Dell

 

While using the AC prower, maybe removing and storing the battery can help as well to additionally dissipate some heat from the back.

 

No way, maybe that's why mine won't recognise my 6200 card! My XPS 15 came with the 1000N card instead and a tech came twice with two new 6200's and couldn't get either to install!!

Gonna try it now

 

And with the 1000N it worked fine?

 

i blogged a little review about the xps 15 aswell as a tip for installing a new modified nvidia driver that works with the adobe premiere mercury engine supports hd audio bitstreaming and optimus.
Dell XPS 15 Review | Christoph Pacher Portfolio

 

Hi everyone,
I know this is an owner's thread and I'm not an owner of the xps yet, I had a question which wasn't worth making a new thread over. If I go with the 720p display on the XPS15 ad connect it to my 1080p TV, will the display be in 720or 1080p. Sorry if this was too nooby or something.

thanks in advance.

 

Your notebook screen can be 720 (or whatever) and you can connect and configure your external display/TV to 1080p (or whatever). Independent things

 

the screen resolution is only relative to the monitor you're going to use. the gpu will send a signal, then the monitor will display it according to its capabilities. so if you choose the 720p display on your pc you'll still be able to connect it to a 1080p tv on which will be displayed a full hd signal.

 

If that is the case then what is the point of having the "disable battery charging" option that is available on this laptop? Surely there would be no need to disable the battery charging if the battery automatically cuts off power after 100% chyarged?

 

answered by JohnnyFJohnsson.
Use "disable battery charging" or better: physically remove the Battery from the Laptop.
Battery life is determined by charging cycles and/or time (and storage temperature).

 

If you have the i7 and the 9-cell, I wouldn't remove the battery, having it elevated helps with airflow.
Unless you have a cooling pad.

 

Yeah it works with the 1000N, but when I install the 6200 it see's the 6200 in device manager but it won't pick up any networks.
I've been sent two new 6200's at this point, neither work, I've uninstalled and deleted drivers for 1000N, then replaced it with the 6200, each one installs but neither of them work!!
When I put back in the 1000N it installs and works straight away and picks up all the networks around me.

No idea what's going on, I don't have time to do a full reinstall of the OS, plus I've already spent ages installing all my programs and stuff.

I looked at the BIOS and obviously WiFi is enabled. So I'm just gonna leave it for the time being, the 1000N is not that bad a card, it is actually dual band in 2.4GHz (300MB/s), it just can't do 5.0GHz and I don't have an N router at the moment anyway..

 

I would also like to try this modified driver, but the gt 420m isn't on the list of supported drivers, and I don't think I know how to install this anyway.

 

The core temp usually is between 55(Min) - 69(Max)
The Graphics varies from 43(Min) to 99(Max)
I will update with pictures soon. Once I start any program which starts using graphics, video, 720p, 1080p files it moves to the 70+ zone and 80+ during gaming and 'm guessing after 100 it crashes

The weird part is that the games aren't even the latest ones, some were released more than a year back and 'm playing them on a medium setting. Strangely when i played starcraft II yesterday on medium the system didn't crash but showed high temps as usual

 

But that's not an answer to his question. I wonder about that too actually. Why is the option there if it's not needed?

 

Read the manual they say that the option id used when you have the notebook connected on an airplane.

Why you say that it is not needed, if you wan the battery stop charging you can use this option or remove the battery.



US Department of Transportation (DOT) Notebook Battery Restrictions
As of January 1, 2008, the US DOT prohibits spare (loose) lithium batteries in checked baggage. A Dell notebook battery may be packed in a checked bag if the battery is installed in a Dell notebook and the notebook is switched Off.

HINT: To disable battery charging, you can use the Battery Charge Disable feature in Dell ControlPoint. This is useful, for example on airplanes, where charging of batteries may not be allowed.