Dell XPS 15 R2 - L502x - Owners Lounge

Had some gaming lock ups. First thought it was my overclock but it locked up again running default playing a new game. Not sure if its the driver or heat.

 

Yeah you're probably right, was just trying to avoid having to go through drivers/windows updates again on a new format.

 

Why is it good to do that before formatting ?

 

Upon delivery of my system I plan on:

~Creating a password reset disk to DVD+R
~Creating a Win 7 repair disk to DVD+R
~Creating a (straight from the factory) system image disk to DVD+R or to USB flash
~Creating a second system image disk after removing bloatware and optimizing a bit

How does that sound ? Too much ? I'm I forgetting anything ?

I'd appreciate any pointers

 

1. If you wish...won't hurt anything.
2. Why not just have Dell send you the OS disk for free and use that?
3. Create the recovery disks - it takes two dual layer DVD's and you can restore in about 30 minutes.
4. Again, won't hurt anything. I'd do it after a clean install though rather than simple program uninstalls.

 

It's just something I like to have when I get a PC (that I didn't build) so I can compare what Dell has installed driver/device wise with what I have after a fresh install. I do the same thing with the add/remove programs window so I don't forget anything.

 

Two dual layer DVD+R disks ? Sweet. I'm going to be using single layer... so three or four disks. Not too bad.

So capacity needed ?...

DVD+R dual layer disk = 8.5GB capacity each x 2 quantity = 17GB
or
DVD+R single layer disk = 4.7GB capacity each x 3 quantity = 14.1GB
x 4 quantity = 18.8GB
or
Would a 16GB USB flash drive be sufficient ? Kind of an expensive alternative it seems.
or
An external hard drive ? If an external drive is used, say a 500GB drive, is it necessary or preferred to create a partition ?

Thanks for any info !!!

 

Anyone having any trouble with Firefox in general or Firefox 4 specifically running on their L502X/Windows 7 setup ?

I was reading about some compatibility problems, Win 7 being 64 bit and Firefox 4 being 32 bit.

Thanks

 

Just a word of warning, the USB drive may be the better option with DataSafe. I tried twice with DL +R DVDs and both times I ran into this somewhat common (per the Dell forums) issue of it hanging when the verify is 72~73% complete. After wasting those two DVDs I put a 16GB flash drive in and it worked fine. I don't know if you'll have the hang issue, it seems not everyone experiences it, but I could not get it to work with discs.

Oh and another note, I tested it after and had to use the USB2/eSATA port for Windows Setup to see the image. I could boot off the flash drive using a USB3 port, but once I got into Setup, the USB3 ports wouldn't allow the image to be found.

 

Well, from my experience, everyone has a different ways of doing the same thing.

Why get the system information to do a clean install?

It is for generic preparation sake for any clean install. It allows us to easy organize our data, into important components, their hardware id, their memory address with easy labels in order to quickly debug any issue that comes around.

This helps us overcome faults by the OEM that try to discourage clean install.
Each OEM has a odd way doing it ie HP for example, they don't post all the drivers and software until 3 months after model release ... hence reason why we backup all factory drivers and software. Download all latest drivers and software, and check off.

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Also, as for any windows installation of any era, it is advised to do all driver and software installation as offline as possible.

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Kinda sux that Dell doesn't release their OEM MS hotfixes on their site, yet HP do. Oh well, I request for them at a later time.

 

My keyboard is rather squeaky when typing, anyone else having this problem? Should I report it to Dell right away?

 

I've called support. The frame is missalligend. They will send me a new device, AT LEAST THEY SAY ITS NEW. I am a bit paranoid that its not going to be new but I specifically asked for a new one and they confirmed that it will be built anew. In the meantime I can keep my old one and wait until the new device arrives. After that they will come and collect the old one.

Good solution?

 

Sounds like a good solution to me, what other options were you considering?

 

Returning it asking for my money back and ordering anew to ensure that I get a new device but I think they will not lie to me when they say that the device will be really new ;-)

 

Whats their eta on the new device and im getting a new one with prioty build. At least what they say.

 

Theres really no refurbish ones out yet because the laptop just came out. And you can tell its new when they send it in the original xps box

 

Don't worry it'll be new. There aren't any refurbished L502X laptops. Plus Dell will keep true to their words.

 

Was looking about to order the Sony CB, but found out for April my EPP was offering 30% off $1499+ systems, so ordered up the one in my Sig, expected here on 4/26.

I9300 died months ago, be good to get a killer laptop again!

 

Hi All,

Should I allow Dell to swap out my processor? BTW - I just read about 17 pages. Awesome job everyone! Thank you.

I ordered the i7-2630QM quad core processor. It was explained I would get an upgrade to the 2640 or 2670 (which Intel doesn't even make) because they no longer offer the 2630QM. It arrived with the 2620M dual core.

Dell has offered to replace the CPU with a quad core i7. Would you suggest having them tear down a perfectly new laptop that hasn't even been turned on yet?

I looked in the service manual and the tech will have to take out 38 screws and remove the display, palm rest, keyboard module, top assembly, heat sink, etc. It seems every time I've had a laptop taken apart they are never the same after. There is always some sort of fit and finish issue that ends up in a infinite loop of replacing bezels, trim pieces, etc.

Then again, the CPUbenchmark.com score for the 2630QM is 6318 and the 2620M is only 3616. That seems like a huge difference.

I still don't understand why Dell considers it an upgrade to go from:
QUAD Core i7-2630QM 2.00 GHz (6MB cache, 4 cores, 8 threads)
to the
DUAL Core i7-2620M Processor 2.70 GHz (4MB cache, 2 cores, 4 threads)

Thanks everyone

 

ETA is 10 Days for priority build! I am getting mine on Prio. too

What was the problem with yours?

 

Because for 2-threaded tasks (or 4-threaded tasks that don't efficiently use more than 50% of a core's attention), the 2620M will be faster than the 2630QM. Benchmarking this is hard, because yes, four cores at 2 GHz can do more work than 2 cores at 2.7 GHz. But in real life if you aren't doing rendering tasks or the latest games, you aren't in a perfect full-saturation situation that would benefit from the additional cores despite the slower speed.

So that's why they overlap--more cores isn't always better just like more speed isn't always better. The question becomes where the tipping point lies between more cores with lower speed and fewer cores with higher speed.

Personally, I'd rank them the way Dell has. For most people who don't do quad-core-benefitting tasks, the 2620M will probably be better (though if there's ever a processing bottleneck, there will be a chance of more delays than with the 2630QM). But the 2720QM may be just as good as the 2620M at dual-core and single-core tasks, which is something I'm hoping another board member, falcon64 who has an identical system except for the processor, will be able to help me out with.

 

my order is being shipped but just like the others that had UK orders, UPS seems to have a non direct route to the UK

Warsaw, Poland 04/07/2011 6:14 P.M.
Koeln, Germany 04/07/2011 12:48 P.M.
Almaty, Kazakhstan 04/07/2011 4:47 P.M.
Incheon, Korea, Republic of 04/07/2011 10:37 A.M.
Shanghai, China 04/07/2011 6:06 A.M.
Koeln, Germany 04/06/2011 5:27 P.M.
Shanghai, China 04/06/2011 9:29 P.M.
China 04/06/2011 9:45 A.M.

At least it is moving and soon I can claim that I am a Dell XPS 15 R2 owner

 

Thanks DakkonA. I think what you're saying is the risk of having them rip out and exchange this processor isn't really worth it - unless they install the 2720 or 2820. Thanks.

 

On the plus side, if they upgrade it and cause a problem, they're responsible for fixing it too. But yeah, I'd say unless they were going to put in a 2720, don't do it. You'll probably be pretty happy with its performance, and later on you should be able to drop in an Ivy Bridge quad core if you find you need it.

 

The dual core as 4MB Cache which means 2MB per core where the 2630QM only has 1.5MB per core. In single threaded tasks the dual core WILL be faster.

 

Shutdown has been hanging for me recently .. and eventually it blue screens, or the machine randomly blue screens on me. I have debugged the memory dump and get the following error

A driver has failed to complete a power IRP within a specific time (usually 10 minutes).

Unfortunately these kinds of errors are typically from third-party drivers, and are really difficult to debug as they corrupt the stack.

Just wondering if anybody else has seen a similar issue and figured out what might be causing it, or if you have experienced it, let me know what devices/driver versions you have so that I can narrow it down.

Thanks

 

Before delving deep into the software end, it might be worthwhile to test your RAM first. Pop a stick out, test. If it still blue screens, swap out one stick for another. If you continue to have problems, then go into the software side of things.

 

Is this on a factory install?? This info would also help.

 

I had one instance of this. I put my laptop into standby all the time. The only time I shutdown is for Microsoft Updates which require a restart.

In three weeks of use, I had one instance where it probably bsod'd. The error in eventvwr (bugcheck was 9f) seems to be the same error you encountered. So there probably is a driver that sometimes fails on hibernate.

 

No, Win7 Enterprise, manually installed by me, all drivers up-to-date from Dell support site.

 

It shut down randomily at times and then eventually shut off agian and it never started back up.
They overnighted me a new mobo. I was able to get it started up but there was no display on the screen.
Got fed up and told them to ship me a new system. They said it will take up to 15 calendar days.

Make sure you call customer care and get some money off for your problems. THey intitatly offered me 35 dollars i b!tched and i got 90 dollars off.
I told them to priotized my new laptop and they said they would but i have a feeling that its not. Is there anyway to check ? Like how did you do it

Guy when a motherboard fried up like that can it blow the display?

best regards.
MIke

 

I had no idea there were priority build options

It's funny though, I had selected standard shipping and I thought it was 7-day, but in the confirmation e-mail it said 3-5 day shipping, which confused me a bit, although on the website it did say 7-day shipping. Nonetheless, I fired off an e-mail to their customer service department and got one back today saying that they had upgraded me to 2-day shipping free of charge!

I know there's a hell of a lot of complaining about Dell's customer service around these parts, and rightfully so, no doubt. But I was awfully impressed that they upgraded my shipping that much, free of charge, without me even so much as asking for it. I just wanted to know if I had 3-5 day or 7-day.

But the EDD is still 4/26, which sucks like hell. And my order remains in "pre-production", which I guess is legitimately fair since I did only place the order on Tuesday morning. Feels like it's already been a week. Is Dell bad about updating their order statuses? With some places it'll stay at something like "pre-production" the entire time until it actually gets shipped. Is that the case with Dell?

I pray like hell I'm one of the lucky people who gets theirs really soon. I desperately need this new laptop, my current one (a 4-year-old MBP) is at death's door with a completely broken and non-functional CD/DVD drive, a battery life of approximately 15 seconds at most, and a partially melted chassis from attempting to play StarCraft 2 at the lowest possible graphics settings with like ~20 FPS. Good god but I want my new laptop *sob*

 

Hey, I am having the exact same problem. It's quite irritating. Has anyone any updates on this problem/issue/annoyance? Does Dell know about it?

 

Hey...what testing did you want to do to make the comparison? I can probably give it a spin this weekend.

 

Oh sorry. Take a look at the Battery Life thread ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/564110-xps-sandy-bridge-battery-life-2.html). I'm not sure if what I've done is the best, but it might be a good starting point.

Actually I'll start a new thread. It's not exactly about battery life anymore.

 

Oh, another thing that is worrying me... I did choose the i7-2630QM, and I notice that this is not even an option anymore on the dell site for a processor, it's either the i7-2620m (dual core of course) or the i7-2720QM. This obviously concerns me, and I guess I'm going to give a Dell a call first thing in the morning and ask them to switch it to the 2720QM, hopefully this isn't going to cause a ing nightmare or something

 

Its only prioty because they sent me a lemon and i have to wait another week or so to receive another one. Also dont go by the fedex 5-7 day rule. It usually ships within 1-2 days from when they release it to fedex.

 

I am from India, placed order for my L502x (ORDERED : XPS L502X (Silver with Aluminium): 2nd generation Intel® Core™ i5-2410M processor 2.30 GHz | JBL 2.1 Speakers | 2.0MP, H.264 Camera | 15.6" (39.6cm) HD (1366x768) WLED display with TrueLife | 6GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM (1 x 2GB + 1 x 4GB) | 1GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 525M graphics with Optimus | 500GB 7200RPM Hard Drive | 6 cell Battery) on 03/31, the status still at Work In Progress, just cant wait to lay my hands on it, the manufacturing unit is under 300Km from my location,its already 8 days and now the estimated date was posted yesterday as 04/20 :-(

 

Dell posted an updated Realtek audio driver on their site. I don't know what the new driver is supposed to fix. I couldn't find any version notes in the driver pack that discusses changes.

 

The Estimated Delivery Date 4/20 has been removed from the status today and it has gone back to the original message of 3 business days to inform you of your date...blah blah blah..... what is happening :-(

 

Welp, I ordered mine on the morning on 4/5 and now exactly 3 days later it has finally moved off of "Pre-Production" and is officially "In Production". I shall take this as a positive thing that (I assume) means they have all the parts at their disposal and are assembling the damn thing. Or it could mean that it took them three days to just pick the work order up out of the queue and somebody is now finally beginning to look for the parts, and I have a month and a half of waiting ahead of me.

It really makes me mildly insane that it could show up next week as easily as next month. I need to stop obsessively checking this thing a dozen times a day and just relax but I caaaaaaan't. >_<

 

Been a while since I've been on the forum, but I've just ordered my XPS 15...

Went for i7-2630QM, 6GB ram, 640GB hdd (although that'll come out and be replaced with an SSD of some sort), 2GB GT 540M,everything else as base, apart from the backlit keyboard. Had to go through a long winded "chat to operator" process to get that added to the order, but I think it'll be a nice to have

Looking forward to it! Got an ETA of 4th May at the moment.

 

Weird question- does anyone have this problem with the quickset overlays? Basically, when I hit Fn-F11 to turn down the volume, it always lowers the volume. However, there's only an on-screen overlay (the little transparent box that shows your volume level) when the focus is on the desktop. If the browser or almost other application is in focus, there is no overlay, although the volume is changed.

I uninstalled quickset and reinstalled from Dell's website, and unlike previous versions of quickset, there's no tray icon for adjusting preferences. And when I navigate to C:\Program Files\Dell\QuickSet and run quickset.exe, it just opens Windows Mobility Center.

What I would LIKE is for the overlay to pop up ALL the time, regardless of applications open. This is really useful for quickly hitting the mute button, because you can actually see that things are muted, as opposed to wondering if it was already on or not.

Is this the same behavior you guys see on your L502x?

 

I didn't know about quickset, but I use 3RVX for volume OSD. Don't know if this is what you are wanting though.

 

Every once in a while this will happen to me. But it seems to fix on reboot.

 

Greetings. A heads up about Dell that I think you guys should know, if you're aware please disregard.

I placed an order for a XPS 15 i7 on 4/4, taking advantage of the recent sale with the approx $400 off and also the $70 off. Total cost for the 2630QM model w/8 GB ram, 1900x1200, 2GB video card, 500gb hard drive, blu ray, Advanced N w/Bluetooth, backlit keyboard, before tax, 1234.99. Seems like a good deal.

I noticed when I got my receipt emailed to me, that they added $175 for warranties that wasn't really clear at all at time of ordering online and I definitely didn't choose any extra warranty options. I called and after about an hour worth of complaining, I got them to agree to deduct it. So final price is $1059.99 for I think a pretty sweet laptop.

The warranty thing I think is pretty shady of Dell, if it wasn't such a good deal I probably would buy from somewhere else. I'm using my Amex Gold so I get it covered anyway but that is lame.

 

I'm a little confused - I got a similar deal to yours, except mine added up to $980 and I just got the 525m (no point upgrading to the 540m for me since it's the identical chip with just a 12% core clock uptick which you can do on your with a mild overclock and no harm done) and only 6GB, plus no bluetooth on the wireless... But it was $429 off the market price, and a full $500 off market when you add in the extra $70.

I didn't notice any extra charges, but it did come with the two-year service plan. Which, quite frankly, seems like a smart addition to have anyway with a laptop like this. I'd rather have that just in case *something* gets fouled up along the way. It was clearly marked amongst the upgrades and came included the deal. Maybe we used different deals, though.

 

Hi all, got the laptop for two days now and overall not so impressed with it.
some of the cons:
the sound is not that great
the left palm rest get very warm after gaming
the left fan is alway on

the pros:
screen are pretty good.

thinking about returning it.

 

Yea you should return it, its a terrible desktop, oh sorry i mean laptop. You are either a very fussy person or a "poo" stirrer lol, i have the tunes on now and its class sound, and never got a warm palm rest. What laptop did you have before?

 

The sound is not that great? Until your post, I've read from multiple people that it has possibly the best sound out of any laptop that currently exists.

Edit: This was meant to be in response to mikezhengcc. :]