Dell XPS 15 R2 - L502x - Owners Lounge

Last year when some XPS 15 L502x owners tried the newer drivers from Synaptics, they reported two issues:

1. it doesn't allow Fn F3 to disable it
2. there's a second or so delay before it will respond after typing keys.

You've confirmed issue 1.
What about issue 2., the delay after typing? Is that still an issue?

 

yea 1 is confirmed here too
2 there are delays if my screen is off i have to touch twice or 3 times to activate the screen or move the mouse
3 in windows 2 the swipe from the left does not change apps like it supposed to
4 pinch to zoom is very jerky / over sensitive in the latest synaptics drivers i reverted to and older versions

 

any one know where i can get the original 1080p RBG panel
laptopscreens.com has been out of this panel for weeks sigh

also i find my sub-woofer is too distorted using default settings could it be its blown or the bit rate / quality of my music is poor

 

Hi
I posted this on the General XPS forum and am cross referencing it here...I really hope someone can give me some direction

My XPS 15 L502x is randomly shutting down, restarting, going to sleep, etc. It seems to be sometimes related to movement or touch (but sometimes it just shuts off with when undisturbed) . It restarts without issue. I ran the dell diagnosis a few times and 1 time was told that I had a critical blue screen error and the other times there was no error found. After reading this forum, it sounds like I am in good company.

Temperature has maxed out once at 81 degrees-could it be overheating? I also wonder if something is not seated correctly since movement seems to exacerbate problem and it got worse following travel.

I want to take it to get repaired but is there any diagnosis I can do at home or anything I can tell the repair shop based on the experience of others. I am not a techie and am leery of updating bios, etc, while the computer is shutting off. I really really don't want to have to get a new computer-this one is less than 2 years old. Power cord and battery do not seem to be issue. Touch pad is has also died. Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

Reporting problem with new Bluetooth drivers (3.0.1302 and 3.0.1304). If anyone else has a problem and want to solve, just uninstall the old driver, use the version 2.6.1212 and wait for a new driver without problem.

Intel® PROSet/Wireless Software — Intel® PROSet/Wireless Software for Bluetooth® technology

 

I did a clean install on my L502x and was overwhelmed by all the drivers stuff I had to download. I think I've gotten most of it down except I can't seem to get the graphics right. It's not letting me go over 1280x1024. I installed the intel graphics drivers, but none of the nVidia ones I find work. They all say it's not compatible with this version of Windows, but I downloaded Windows 7 64 bit.

I've been getting them from here. ftp://ftp.dell.com/Browse_For_Drivers/Laptops/XPS/XPS 15 (L502X)/index.html

 

try downloading directly from NVidia. Drivers - Download NVIDIA Drivers

 

What problems?

BTW, an Intel Support rep told me that the separate Bluetooth package is no longer required. I don't know if he's correct or not, but when I installed Intel PROSet/Wireless WiFi Connection 15.8.0, that installer included updating Bluetooth + High Speed.

 

Hello there! Anyone could share the latest color profile for this laptop? Thank you very much

 

Hi guys!! I've been an avid fan for ages... actually wrote a review on here back in 2007

Anyways... I have a serious problem. I've had my L502X since it came out and just in the last couple of weeks the processor is acting up. It is constantly at MAX TURBO and my fan is going crazy trying to cool it! I don't have any mods or bootleg stuff installed. I even uninstalled my antivirus and lots of programs and nothing happened. The processor isn't under load, but stays maxed.

I fear that this will greatly reduce the life of the components being that high all the time... I have no idea what to do...

( another guy looked to be having a similar problem a page back or so)



Windows 7 64bit
Intel i7 2720
8GB Ram

 

@ghostfreckle

try install xtu
http://downloadmirror.intel.com/21054/eng/XTU-Setup.msi
that may show up some turbo boost controls.

else try ThrottleStop wich have some downclock or power saving options
http://www.techinferno.com/files/ThrottleStop_500a.zip

 

Hi and thanks for the help capitankasar!! Always awesome when a n00b doesn't get punked and is actually helped

Anyways I actually figured out the problem by using "task manager" and checking "processes". Now I don't understand all that stuff, I did notice that my "realtek HD" process had like 16 instead of the 1 or two the rest of process had. I ended the task and Turbo instantly shut off and went back to normal. Must be something with the latest update from Microsoft... Ayways, I uninstalled it, because on reboot it started max turbo again, and all is good. I know it was for sound, but, my sound works fine without it. I use it plugged to my TV.

FYI: The version of the driver was "Realtek ALC665 Audio v.6.0.1.6312". I don't know if mine was corrupted or not, but I'm not installing it unless I need to.

Thanks again!!!

 

Hey!
I will take apart my 2 year old L502x to put in a SDD and to clean the fan etc. Right now I am running BF3 with GPU: ~75°C and CPU ~70°C. Would a repaste make sense or should I rather leave the heatsink alone? I have some Shin Etsu thermalpaste at hand.

 

Can anyone confirm this? I am asking about 120Hz on an external screen via HDMI 1.4 or Displayport... anyone tried and can confirm that it WILL WORK 100% ?

Thanks

 

hey guys i reformatted the computer and in the process of setting everything back in order can someone guide me to were i can download the color profile and how to install the link in the original thread is not working thanks

 

Hi,

I'm planning to run a dual monitor setup on my L502x, just wanted to know if that was possible without a docking port/port replicator? Using 2 monitors not including the laptop monitor itself.

Also if a docking port/port replicator is needed for this model, can anyone recommend me a good one?

 

I have installed crucial c3 in optical caddy. it is is seen in first screen as device, but I have not it in boot options (just primary hdd)... is there any way to boot windows (7, 8) from it?
thanks

 

when i install Fifa 2014 demo on my pc it stutter every some seconds !!!!!!
any one know the problems

 

Hi guys - been away for some time (like almost 2 years....) The screen hinges on my L502x are starting to go, any idea where I can get new ones from? TIA

 

@pjcronje

what screen resolution u have?

if you have the HD, or the HD+, you can upgrade to a FHD one, I heard they are awesome for this laptop ^^

 

Hi boys and girls!
Wondered if anyone could help clear up a little confusion? My aunt's L502x (bought with the help of you guys) developed a fault with the FHD panel (B156HW01 is all the info i know) and has been replaced under warranty. The new screen, while correct resolution and bright, has very poor viewing angles and an odd colour shift, the viewing angles are the big issue to her.
I can't seem to find a way of finding out the make and model number of the new screen. A call to the engineer that replaced it, didn't help either.

Can anybody help me find the model number of the new panel without opening the unit, or shed some light on the different panels used in the L502X.

Cheers, J

 

HWinNFO may be your friend here:
HWiNFO, HWiNFO32/64 - Download

Cheers

 

Got the Intel wireless-AC 7260 today. No problem with the installation. Uninstalled the Intel software for the Intel 6230 and then install the new driver and ready to go. Just need an AC router to test with now.

 

can we disable optimus in bios settings?

 

Any windows 8.1 users? I upgraded and my video card performance is like 50% gone. I updated to the newest driver as well and it hasn't changed.

 

yes im on 8.1 since early last month i have the gt525 but canst say i noticed any performance decrease

 

Here's my problem: I am using ICC profile (the one that was uploaded somewhere on this forum, I think, or on one of the review websites) to make colors on this thing look acceptable. The problem is, that this profile overrides the brightness and/or contrast settings in graphics settings menu (right click on desktop > graphics...). Once I change those, my screen drops the ICC profile, then I have to go to NVidia Control Panel > Adjust desktop color settings and pick another option of the two and then pick the first one again, which resets ICC profile (I have came up with this hack only after 3 years of using this thing, usually I'd have to restart the damn system). So when my ICC profile resets, it resets brightness (or whatever) and it's too bright for me again.

Can I somehow remove brightness settings from the profile or edit them? Is there an easy way to do it? I need this color profile, it makes colors look decent and not as blue. But it overrides brightness/contrast settings.

(PS: not going to buy Dell notebooks anymore, and probably anything with Windows. This stuff just doesn't work like it should.)

 

In tftcentral laptop panels table I have found that this notebook's panel (1080p) is B156HW01 V7. Googled and found some kind of PDF file that seems to be about this panel, and there's PWM mentioned in it. So I was wondering how does it affect eye strain.

Maybe it's going to be helpful to someone. I have found this article that talks about PWM in monitors that cause eye strain. It's in Romanian but I've used Google to translate.
It links to a utility called IntelPWMControl, which reportedly increases PWM frequency in Lonovo T420s notebooks with Intel HD cards. The link to utility is broken but I've looked for it and found the utility and tried it. Maybe it's a placebo effect, but I think I feel something... Maybe somebody else has eye strain when using this display and knows more.

 

Have any of you extended your warranty on the L502x? I've had my laptop since its launch and extended it once. Came in handy, as the motherboard was replaced soon after one year. The laptop still looks new and works great...I especially love the 1080p screen and great speakers which are still superior to many laptops on the market today. I guess at this point I was wondering what Dell would do if the motherboard died again, give me the latest XPS, or replace the motherboard? Another laptop at this spec would cost over a 1000...whereas extending the warranty is ~150.

Would appreciate any thoughts/advice.

 

Hi guys. What a thread! Hope my mail confirms if(/when?!) I get a reply.

So, like many (I suspect), I found this thread whilst going for the driver re--install, after putting a better OS (win7ultimate, not Home Premium) on a new, better SS hard-dirve (OCZ vertex? anyway)

It's been... emotional. My old hard drive (much bigger, 700 GB?) was hooked up via usb (no esata cables/enclosures yet). Fine for a week, then some ntfs / disk controller errors... then It died. Don't know if it was the drivers (I had to guess, before finding this, which ones and which order... how many chipsets?! ) or because some MBR info was there still referencing it as a master (I'm guessing here) or maybe (probably?) cause TuneUp Utilities allowed me to deactivate the USB3 host controller program, and disable it's startup (to optimize OS logon times)

So new driver (native VHD to 'bare metal', fast but still errors in event viewer (I know, get real! 0 errors in windows?!) ...

I was trying (unsuccessfully) to recover the drive, using the XP desktop, 'cause the laptop stops responding when the external's connected , I can't select "scan" OR "continue"... I need to offline the disk in disk management, or remove it 'unsafely '. My genius little brother suggested to disable anti-virus. Now, I've just put Avast on, and I'm wondering if that, along with maybe bad driver / deactivating the usb3 program listed in tuneup startup/program deactivator has caused that issue...

I'm actually here, however, also to query the audio, as the awesome maxx waves I've got reinstalled is .... fluctuating, maybe in space or decibels, but it's noticeable. Also, I've just noticed the title's in the mixer are mis-presented:



now, the sound I do care about. I don't want to uninstall everything (unless advised?) but I don't remember customizing the HD driver install to not install audio (saw that mentioned in the '20 steps to happiness')...

That's enough for now. I hope someone has something to say on the matter.

I'm Jonny btw. Not a bad machine. Can't wait to get her purring!

Thanks!

 

Dell XPS 15 L502x graphics freezes with charger plugged in

I am running a GT540M 2GB Graphics Card.

Freezes: When I play games with my laptop plugged in charging it freezes up and I cannot do anything; I have to shut my laptop off by holding the power button.

Runs Fine: However when I play games on the battery it is fine and does not freeze up.

I should also note that I have tried to back date my graphics driver and updating the BIOS, neither have worked.

What could the problem be?

Thanks

 

@jeff09

if you didnt tried yet.

try with this custom and undervolted BIOS

http://l502x.lag.re/L502X_A12_540m_83_85_Unlocked_Menus_v5.rar

flashing instructions and mod details are at this topic.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...modded-bioses-download-gpu-voltages-more.html

let me know if it still crashing

 

Unfortunately this has not helped

 

in that case, ensure the system is not overheating.

there are also some hardware mods detailed on that topic to improve stsbility and reduce crashes.

however the most easy (but also crappy) method to make crashes dissapear is to underclock the GPU to make the crashes dissapear

 

I've purchased a 6 cell battery JWPHF for my L502x and every time I turn on the machine it gives me this message:



The battery is not genuine, but a "high quality" copy. Should I return it or there's a way to fix this message?

 

Is there any setting to dim the hardware lights?

I mean these lights::
the "XPS" logo on the base behind the hinge; and the row of hardware lights above the keyboard, including the power switch, WiFi icon, Windows Mobility Centre button, Dell Instant Launch Manager button, and Waves Audio button?

 

I will try and repaste soon, NiVIDA Inspector I use to underclock and it works fine most of the time, but I do not want to have to do this all the time as I am not getting the most out of the PC and for most games it still crashes.

 

A solid year using Windows 8/8.1 and I must confess that I love the OS. The modern UI may be not as useful as I thought it would be when I first used it (I expected it to be akin to OS X notification centre and whilst it is, it still pales in actual usefulness). But, as someone pointed - Desktop side improvements in Windows 8/8.1 are fairly enough to make it a big step from Windows 7 - which I agree entirely with.

My only complaint is battery life. I expected it to rise, but it actually feel quite a bit. Have anyone experienced the same?
I don't know if it's due to Windows 8.1 itself or A12 bios is to blame, but whilst I used to get nearly good 6-7 hours using WiFi on Windows 7, now I'm well under 5 hours.

At first I thought that battery wear was to blame, but I noticed the drop just after installing Windows 8 a year go.
I've tried fresh installations or Captain Kassar's modded BIOS (which don't really matter outside games, as Optimus will use Intel's GPU on light usage) with no success.

More than a way to improve battery life, I'd really like to know if other L502X owners experienced the same problem. Sometimes I think that I may be a bit confused about how my battery actually behaved on Windows 7 and right know I'm unable to install it and measure battery to be entirely sure.

 

Hello good people, I'd want to ask what happened to the FN + F3 issue on Win8. I have it from like half a year and it still is not fixed. Haven't people already found a workaround? I know about the mobility center disable, but there are few issues with it:

1) Touchpad enables automatically after my screensaver goes on, and I have to disable it again after awakening the PC.

2) In windows 7 I activated mobility center with only touching the "gears" soft key, now it does the same as right clicking the start button. Is there a fix for this too?

 

What does it mean when the computer would crash with the charger plugged in but it wont crash when its running off the battery? I have the dell l502x and its unfortunate problems. I have my own theory to how this laptop can be fixed. People including me undervolt and underclock to be able to play games. Well by doing so, the computer doesn't use as much energy as it would on stock clocks and voltages. What if the only problem here is that the computer is simply not getting enough power thus would crash when for example the game starts too consume a lot of memory of the GPU and boom, crash. The alienware laptop that had the gt 540m graphics card had a 150watt charger compared to the dell l502x with the same graphic card but with a 130w charger. A simple solution would then be to simply buy a 150w charger for this computer. Im actually about to buy one and will reply if it worked perfectly for me. Anyone else thinks this could work?

 

Hello good people, I've got almost 2 year old XPS 15 (L502), equiped with i7 2670 QM, 8GB RAM, Nvidia 540M, FullHD display and 1T Samsung HDD.

15 days ago I got it from service, where it had its motherboard, palmrest, kbd and some cables replaced (because of some accidental damage (a.k.a Beer) I did to it) and since then, I have an issue - whenever I load the video, by playing World of Warcraft (settings are in the middle, nothing that heavy), the system crashes.

There are 3 possible scenarios: the whole system crashes, only WoW crashes (and i am sometimes able to kill it via the windows console) or the video crashes and recovers.

I did a test yesterday, played Diablo 3 on max settings, the system was not undervolted nor underclocked, for around an hour - it did not crash (GPU load was high, around 95-99%). Tried WoW - crashed soon after I started playing

Whats odd is that thing was not happening with my old mainboard, or at least not that often (before was like 1-2 times per month, now its 4-5 times per hour).

Tried many things, installed win7, undervolted, formatted everything, installed win 8, tried many many nvidia drivers, played with Nvidia settings, played with windows power settings, tried the TDR fix - no difference, it keeps crashing, undervolting and underclocking help a bit, but the issue still occurs.


I used gpu-z to measure the temperatures - imo they are normal, video is between 70 and 73 degrees C when loaded (undervolted) and around 78 when on normal voltage


Question is - why it was OK with my old motherboard ? Are there some tests you recommend me to run, so I can try and pinpoint the problem ?


I am still under warranty, I'm considering calling Dell again, to replace my new mainboard, but I am not sure what I should tell them - the issue happens on one game (and its the only game I play actually)

 

How do i replace/reinstall left trackpad button on dell l50x?

 

Hey guys, it's been awhile...I haven't been using my L502x now that I've moved on to a Samsung NP900X4C for something lighter, thinner, and consequently, less powerful. I keep thinking about ways to troubleshoot what's going on with my L502x, but I've run out of ideas... It'll pass all Dell Diagnostics with flying colors, Memtest86+ runs through numerous passes no problem, and stressing the GPU/CPU for nearly a day hasn't reproduced what I keep encountering. Basically, this is what happens after a completely random amount of up-time:

Dell XPS 15 L502x - Strange Crashing Issue - YouTube

Either it will spaz out completely like that, or it will just die on its own (completely shut off, as if it lost power). I'm guessing either the GPU is toast, or the power supply... Has anyone else seen such a problem before?

 

Hi, there. It's funny that my story is absolutely the same as yours - had ok laptop, then i spilled beer over it, then my "motherboard, palmrest, kbd and some cables" were replaced and crashes after that - alot of crashes. After that problem DELL service replaced my motherboard like 4 times, but the problem still existed. What fixed it for me was that the fifth time I went there, they swapped my CPU with a new one, which solved the crashes. I am enjoying my laptop alot now.

 

Hey, thanks a lot for the answer! I can add that overvolt (2D - default, 3D to 1V) is not working as well. I did a complete Dell test, everything went fine.


I underclocked my core GPU clock to 625 mhz and it was fine for 1-2 weeks, then it started doing it again. Now I underclocked it to 592 and it hasn't crashed yet, but I'm still planning to call Dell.

P.S. Judging by your nickname, we are probably in the same country (BG). If this is the case, will it be a problem for you to bother you with few additional questions about where and how ?


Thanks !

 

Sure, use myusername @ gmail.com to contact me.

 

Hat looks like it's a hardware thing. Have you tried reinstalling Windows from scratch to see if that helps?

My suspicion is still a hardware failure, though like you mentioned it would appear to be the GPU not the power supply.

 

so my original battery is like 47.7 percent wear what's the best after market 9 cell battey to buy or just pay $50 for the original 9cell dell battery on ebay???

 

Recently my DVD drive stopped working on my L502X running Windows 8.1

In device manager I get a yellow asterisk under DVD/ CDROM Drive for the PLDS DVD+-RW DS-8A5Sh with the following error

Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information (in the registry) is incomplete or damaged. (Code 19)

I've tried removing the drivers and updating it but it returns with the same error

I have also tried deleted the registries for it in Windows with no success.

Has any experienced the same problem and have found a solution as its very frustrating?

 

Have you tried the upper/lower filters fix? There is a Microsoft Fix it utility : Your CD or DVD drive is not recognized by Windows or other programs

You can also manually go into the registry and try to fix it, however I will not be responsible for any damages that you may do to your OS/registry if you try this fix, you should always have a backup of the registry before you go poking around into it;

Go to Start -> run -> 'regedit'

Go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

In that folder, delete the Upper and Lower Filters registry values and reboot your machine. These registry keys pick up random values and will make your CD/DVD disappear (even though it physically works) or it won't operate properly.