**The Official Studio XPS 1645 Intel Core i7 "Owners Lounge"

Just got my xps 1645, and its been good so far except for the blu-ray. When I put the disc in, it took about 3-5 minutes to load and my screen color changes..
I also have an issue where the movie jitters a bit. Looks like the software which came with dell is not that great.

I am going to call dell support tonight to clear that up.

The notebook seems to have good built quality, I was holding it at the corners and seems to have no bending affect. I was able to install almost all my old software on the with win7 64bit without too much issues. The exception being adobe acrobat pro 7.

On another dell, I was able to set up hot corners on the touchpad. But can't seem to find it on this xps. I miss how I can go backwards or forwards with a touch of the touchpad corners.

I also like the dell widget with simulates Lepeord bar, but its on top. With this, I dont need the quicklinks bar on the right.

But in truth, I don't find i7 that much faster compare to my core2.

 

Why is my i7 being reported as a single core and not 4 cores by CPUID & CPUZ

 

looks terrible!

wouldn't start this morning for about 20 pushes of the power button... what is that about.

sorry about the gigantic photo... i forgot how to resize

 

What does Task Manager show? How many threads?

How many CPUs in Task Manager?

Sounds faulty.

~Ibrahim~

 

i do custom controls, i use FDSV for movment.

 

What is that? Dead spots on LCD?

 

What spec of yours? Did you do something to DELL? Complain?

 

My specs are: I7-720, 4GB RAM, 4670 1GB, 15,6" FullHD WLED, 128GB SSD, Dell Bluethoot, Dell Wi-Fi (only b-g, my mistake, but here on the 1645 there aren't the Intel wi-fi), no TV, no 3G.

I do nothing to DELL, I'm knowing no one in DELL that can accelerate my order. I've only had some problem with Credit Card payment, but nothing significant.
I ordered via web, but the order was cancelled due the credit card problem, then it was reordered via phone.
Last but not least: I live in Italy, in a very small village in the Alps, the UPS is my problem: when I ordered my IPOD it thakes about 10 days to deliver (1-2 days was declared on apple's website)! I hope this time can be less delayed.

 

Got mine! For those of you going with a wipe and fresh build you may find my recent thread helpful for piecing things back together.. its in my sig

 

yep, dead pixels...

 

That is a serious case of dead pixels. It's ridiculous!

 

Here's a noob question (this is my first Dell BTW)... is there a software utility included on the 1645 that automatically updates the drivers and software if newer ones are released? Instead of searching the drivers website trying to figure what is newer than I already have installed/updated?

I've looked everywhere and am wondering if the factory Dell install somehow missed this on my system...

Thanks in advance.

 

I don't have a 1645 yet, but historically Dell has not offered anything like this.

That's not to say that I'm not already working on a project that would do just that though

 

Windows update would allow Dell to publish their own drivers and have them automatically pulled down to your machine when Windows searches for drivers. But that would actually be the right thing to do.

 

i wanna throw this in here and not make a new topic about it for modding purposes

but i have a less-than-legitimate version of windows 7 ultimate here - which has both the 32 bit AND 64 bit OS on a single-layer dvd?

how is this possible?

it asks when you go to install which version

i feel like something must have been fleshed out, but it worked great

 

That was brave!

 

Yeah, I think it's called Dell Support Center? Check the downloads on the site.

 

Responding to my own question. I sent an email to Dell tech support identifying my issue. They responded that the Dell XPS esata port will not support an esata dual drive bay configuration (port multiplier). That's really too bad because my external esata dual drive bay is a great piece of equipment.

Although, I can use it by pluging the esata cable into an expresscard adapter w/esata ports and that supports both drives. Also my external dual drive bay has a USB 2 connection so I connected it with USB and the computer recognized both drives in the external bay. So I have three possibilities: 1) connect my external dual drive bay with esata and only use one hard drive with it, 2) connect my external dual drive bay with esata to an expresscard adapter and get the use of both hard drives, 3) connect my external dual drive bay with USB 2 and get the use of both hard drives but with a slower connection.

 

Anyone else unable to install this? I get an OS error saying its not the correct version for my OS. Win 7 x64

 

Yeah, I got the same error. I downloaded R250352.exe identified as an update for Windows 7 64 and ST950042ASG hard drive (it don't work on my computer).

 

Did you guys burn the ISO?

 

Thats probably whats wrong, im trying to use the usb method by dell.

 

Yeah all the EXE does is extract files, you have to burn the ISO it produces and boot off the resulting CD, or copy everything in the FILES directory to a USB drive and boot off it.

 

Yeah, I made an ISO CD and booted from it and everything worked great (updated fine). Thanks for the hint.

 

CPUZ reported single core with 2 threads on my 1645. I contacted Dell, they accessed my system remotely to verify. They also checked the Task Manager and concured, then informed me that they'll replace my system. However, they refused to acknowledge the need for 130 watt adapter or the existence of a throtling problem!

 

yeah, if it was a couple i would juat suck it up, but it is to obvious to me, so i complained...

they are replacing it with a new one

 

Hmmm.... I see it. I configured the alerts to "check daily"... however, I'm still I haven't downloaded yet. I'm guessing this is where is would show up?

Oddly enough I don't see the Support Center software as an option for download for the 1645 win7 package. I wonder if I should just download and install all the drivers that were updated in the last month... chances are I don't have them yet....

 

Is anyone else having trouble burning cd/dvd's? I have the regular dvd/cd burner, didnt see the need for blu-ray. It works fine reading dvd's and cd's but i always get errors trying to burn anything, errors before it even starts burning. just curious anyone experience this, or do i just have a faulty drive?

 

something annoying has been happening tonight. watching a video with windows media player and it randomly pauses, and restarts... probably software related but annoying none the less.

 

Anyone know if there is a drivers thread for the XPS 1645? I can't find updated SSD firmware - I heard it is important (stops noisy drive), anyone found those drivers

so far

updated ATI drivers
updated bios
will have to email Dell for X-FI disk, didn't get that

 

SSD shouldnt make any noise at all

think yer kewl man

 

ok, i figured out was happening....

the media remote i have for our tv and desktop computer somehow works on this rig. i thought i was going nuts... my wife would pause to talk or something and it would pause my video, or start a new video, my media center would open up.. thought i was going insane...

 

in any case

it would be here under SATA drives

 

DVDs store around 4.7GB of data per layer which is sufficient capacity to store multiple OSes.

 

I also have the regular DVD/CD burner and it has worked fine for me.

 

Was on with dell support for more than 2 hours and still no luck with blu-ray play back. He remote into the machine and uninstall the drive and reinstall with whats on the dell site. Updated the PowerDvd DX 8 version and the blu-ray play back still take a few minutes (almost 5) before it plays.

The now want to uninstall the software and reinstall, but since I dont have the install disc, we will wait till I get the disc in the mail.

Anyone having blu-ray playback issues where it takes almost 5 minutes b/f the movie is played? My dvd playback starts in a few seconds.


Help......

 

Blu-ray is going to be a bit slower with firmwares not nearly as optimized as DVDs, but not five minutes. Plugged in or battery?

My BD "Dark Knight" takes about 15 seconds to load. Could it be the disc? Some BDs are pretty early and aren't great in load-times, I've heard.

~Ibrahim~

 

Thanks, I only see Seagate drivers here, isn't the SSD samsung?

Anyone else updated SSD firmware

 

Wow, 15 seconds is great compare to my 5-minutes..
I have it plug into A/C. So its not the power.

After every sub-chapter, it stays a blank frame for about 1 minute, so if there are some pre-data for the blu-ray, it takes 5 minutes. I am playing the "Kung-fu Panda" blu-ray disc.

I may try a few other players in the mean time: ArcSoft TotalMedia Theater, Slysoft HD, and WinDVD 9.

 

That sounds to me more like a driver problem than a software problem, but I'm still curious what your results will be.

 

what the hell?

dvd = 4.37GB = 4480MB

 

The updates are just for the Seagate (non-SSD) drives.

 

i just thought it had to be compressed or stripped down because if you look at any torrent site each version of win 7 ultimate is over 5 gigs sooo who knows

 

My machine has gone wrong already!
I have a major problem, that no matter what settings I choose under power management, my machine will always go into sleep mode after some time. Then when I try to wake my machine the screen will never turn back on!
Then i'm forced to reset the machine, losing any work, settings etc on it.

I reported this to Dell UK tech support (India) yesterday afternoon and they got me to run a number of diagnostic tests. The results of these tests showed a CMOS error, which doesnt mean a lot to me, but the technician assured me that this meant the battery needed to be replaced and that this was simple.
The engineer arrived today, and did indeed replace the battery, but also came with a spare motherboard as 'dell wernt sure of the exact problem'
The battery replacement did not solve the problem, and the engineer admitted he'd never seen this machine before and wasnt happy to replace the motherboard as he believed it wasnt the right environment to do it in, and it wouldnt fix it anyways.
So now i'm on hold to speak to a manager at dell about a replacement machine as its less than 4 days old

 

I can "officially" post in this forum now as I took delivery of my 1645 yesterday!

It is a very "pretty" laptop ...

For some reason though I was expecting the "leather" to me more ... while it looks nice and I have no real regrets ... if I were to do it again ... I probably would have not gotten the leather ...

The power supply does get warm ... after only an hour of playing with it (initial setup and tested the BluRay player ...) ...

 

I have a question for anyone that has the Blu-Ray RO drive. Mine seems to act funny in that every other slot loading drive I have used it "grabs" the disk when it is inserted and pulls it into the drive. The one on my 1645 seems to not do this and I end up putting the disk part way in, removing it and the second time I stick it in it grabs. Also I hear it cycle several times anytime the machine is powered on so I am trying to figure out if I have a defective drive that I need to call Dell about.

 

I have to push the disc 70% of the way in before it grabs it. I assume its to stop you from putting unsupported mini-discs or other objects in the drive.

 

yes, that is correct.

anyways, back on topic: it seems several people are quite enjoying the latest iteration of the XPS. i would purchase this notebook if i didn't have some reservations about the thermal output of the mobile i7 in the XPS chassis

 

Heat issues is one thing we don't have with this notebook, maybe it's because of the A/C power issue preventing the GPU and CPU from simultaneously running at full speed, but it runs pretty cool for notebook with a quad core processor.

 

same here.. about 70% in to get the slot load bd to grab the disk.. it does feel wierd