XPS 12 Owners Lounge

Hey guys,

I recently purchased an i7 4500 xps 12, and all I can say is what a beauty.

Unfortunately like most complaints that have arisen from new owners of this baby, the touchscreen stops working after a while.

The strange thing is not only does my touchscreen stop responding, but the touchpad stops responding to two finger gestures for scrolling up and down and the dell touchpad icon vanishes from my tray.

I have read almost all the pages of this forum and I think I have tried most tricks with no avail.

What I have noticed is that my touchscreen just stops working after a certain period of time when it is idle, on or off. What I mean by that is, that after an hour when the laptop is on, the touchscreen stops working. and even when I put the computer to sleep and wake it up after an hour, the touchscreen stops working.

I have noticed in the device manager under human interface devices the two items under I2C HID have exclamation marks on them, so I did all the tricks mentioned earlier and nothing works unfortunately (including trying to alter the power setting option, and turning off hibernate through rapid start)

Of course rebooting the laptop fixes the touchscreen temporarily until the next idle time, but it gets old very quickly, and I didn't buy this baby to reboot it every time I pick it up.

So I went to dell drivers and downloads and installed the intel serial io drivers (2-3mbs) right after installing this before even hitting restart my pc, the touchscreen came back to life, So I thought i fixed it. but once again, when the pc is idle I'm back to square one.

Has anyone experienced this type of touchscreen issue with the touchpad as well?
I would like to believe its a software issue, because I would hate to have to return this baby. (I would prefer to not to have to replace any hardware)

Any fixes would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

 

The XPS 12 fits into the Macbook Air sleeve I use. It's a bit more snug than the MBA would be, but it still fits.

If in doubt, bring your laptop to the store and try a case out.

 

Well, received my Haswell 4500 XPS12 this morning, set up most of the software I want on it before, while playing with it in tablet mode, realising that the volume up button at the side is faulty/doesn;t work at all. Volume down is fine and I can change the volume using the Fn + F11/F12 keys so it looks like a mechanical fault with the button. I know it's a fairly minor fault but what a pain nonetheless.

 

Get a service call on it. This is a great little machine, but that would really suck to have to get out of tablet mode to change the volume....

 

If he's on the desktop, he can change it with the tray icon.

 

Still, get it serviced. Why not? They'll come right to your house to do it, so you just need to be around. If it's hard to find a convenient time, just wait -- you've got a year. after all.

I've mentioned this before, and I don't think anyone responded, but I'll try again: is anyone having a problem where parts of the screen flicker black, in bands or sections? It usually starts about five minutes after start-up or wake from sleep, and gets progressively worse until the screen is unusable. Moving or shaking the laptop seems to have no effect, and restarting solves the problem, so I'm thinking it has to be a driver issue or something, and not a hardware problem. Anyone else seen this?

That and the image retention are my only issues right now. I can deal with both since I otherwise love the machine, but solutions would be nice.

(I'm checking regularly for a new touchpad driver to address the two-finger-scroll lag, new BIOS to hopefully make the fan less aggressive, new sound drivers that don't mess up the headphone jack, and a new video driver to hopefully fix the "black screen flickering" issue. These are all small-ish problems, but I've never had a laptop that felt so... unfinished, before. A shame because the hardware itself is wonderful -- image retention on the otherwise-gorgeous screen aside.)

 

Was just saying. Until he DOES get it serviced, the volume can still be changed in tablet mode.

Are you talking about the static that can be heard when you put earphones into the earphone jack? Someone in this thread mentioned that this laptop just doesn't handle low-impedance earphones well, hence the static.

 

Yes, and several other people (myself included) have noted that that's wrong, because uninstalling the Realtek audio driver solves the problem entirely -- you just lose the extra audio options by doing so. It would be nice to be have the better sound and my headphones, instead of having to choose.

 

Noticed exactly the same thing.. plugged my Klipsch X10I earphones into the side and you could hear each time the audio subsystem came on with a fairly constant hissing. Uninstalled the Realtek drivers and it sounds fine now.

 

Perhaps it isn't wrong per se, but merely that the drivers are the source of a problem that is lessened with higher-impedance earphones. I remember someone else in the thread noting as much.

 

Yes, that's pretty much the whole point. The hardware is perfectly capable of outputting clear sound to any headphone, and therefore I am hoping that an update to the Realtek software will address the hiss that is caused by that software.

 

Is this headphone problem prevalent on all XPS12s? Will check my 2 tonight...

 

I haven't had any problems with my headphones.
Not sure what that's worth, but wanted to add my two cents.

Also, not sure if this has been asked and answered, but what are our options for the smallest travel charger possible?

I feel the one it came with is still a little bulky, especially the power cord portion.

And suggestions appreciated!

 

You think this PSU is bulky? It's probably the smallest laptop charger I've ever had and I've had a lot of laptops.

 

I haven't noticed any earphone hiss, and I'm using basic sony buds.

As I mentioned in an earlier post I'm having wifi and bluetooth disconnect issues. On the XPS12 are wifi and bluetooth handled by the same chip or area of the motherboard? I'm still waiting for Dell to come out and replace my motherboard to resolve my SSD connection issue, would that likely also effect a hardware wifi/bluetooth glitch?

 

Bluetooth has now failed completely - comes up in device manager as "Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)".

Rebooting fails to show any bluetooth driver, but device manager shows "Unknown Device" with the same error mentioned above. Re-installing the Dell bluetooth drivers and rebooting gives the same results.

I've contacted Dell tech support again to check on the progress for my previous service call and report these new issues, and they still can't tell me when the required part (motherboard) will be in stock. It's now been 2 weeks since I started this service call.

To recap, the issues with my 1 month old XPS 12 are:
* random hard drive disconnect resulting in BSOD
* Screen ghosting
* No bluetooth functionality
* Frequent wifi disconnect
* Touchpad glitchiness and memory leak

And Dell has no timeline to fix any of these.

With this in mind, I've requested for them to start the process on issuing me a full refund for this machine. Pretty disappointed with the product and service I've gotten. Hopefully the fact that I'm now almost 5 weeks into ownership (after wasting 2 weeks on a service call) doesn't hamper the refund process.

 

Yes, Epic, my wife's new Haswell edition has this exact same problem. It normally happens to her at random times and there's also side-to-side screen judder which makes the machine unusable and only a restart resolves the issue temporarily. So she's had the Mobo replaced and it's still the same. Dell have spent about 2 hours remote accessed and haven't come up with anything. The Dell tech thought it could be a loose cable but unfortunately we have no resolution for it so are sadly returning it. I bought it off Dell's UK Outlet for her and I managed to get the even better i7-4650, HD5000 version on Monday for just a little more so hoping that one will work fine. They're fantastic machines but it's a shame there's a number of small issues with the new model which appear to be hindering a lot of us.

If you come up with a resolution, please inform us as it'll be useful for future reference.

 

I'm keen to get this model but can't find it on the UK Dell web-site - did you get it from the outlet store? I'd also be very interested to hear any thoughts you have on the performance of the i7-4650/HD5000 versus the model you're returning.

Many thanks.

 

I think it's only available in the US. Someone said that they were giving out 4650s because of a shortage of 4500s, or something.

Anyway, W8.1 is coming out tomorrow. Does anyone reckon it'll fix any of the problems on the XPS 12?

 

Ah, thanks for the confirmation that it's not just me. I'm fairly certain that it's not hardware (or at least, not loose hardware), since it happens either within a very short frame after start-up/wake-up, or never at all. It seems like either the start/wake works properly, or something goes wrong and this is the result. It's annoying but not a dealbreaker to me, since it seems like something a driver update could fix.

I've only seen them for sale new on the Dell website in Canada. Elsewhere, they only seem to show up for sale in refurbished machines, which makes sense since they seem to be what gets used in replacements. Is that because they're out of 4500s? Could be, although I also wonder if it's just a running change that hits repairs first because much less of a parts stockpile needs to be built up for that. It's not really a big deal to me, but I admit I'd happily take one if it came through repairs that were going to happen anyway. The problem is that I haven't yet heard of an XPS 12 MB replacement ever fixing the problem it was meant to fix -- that just seems to be what tech support throws at a problem when they can't figure anything else out. Almost by definition, a machine with a 4650 MB therefore has had a problem that Dell couldn't figure out. That'd make me nervous about buying a refurbished one.

 

Yes, UK outlet. It must be available in a location in Europe, as all laptops which end up on the UK outlet are from within the EU. I have a feeling Netherlands may have sold it but can't be sure. I'll let you know how it is but we're quite excited about having this rare model, just hope it's free from any issues though. I'll get my wife to play her favourite Sims 3 on it and tell me how it performs, lol,

 

Yeah, agree that Dell only ever seem to send out Mobo's and most of the time doesn't fix the issue. My wife's issue with the banding is also random but has always occurred within an hour of using the laptop and now it's become a lot worse so I think it's a hardware issue personally, just not sure which component. I really hope we don't have any issues with the upgraded model though. fingers and toes crossed! Let us know if you fix the issue with a driver update.

 

Hey all,

Dell have released all new drivers/ firmware/ chipset for practically everything in the XPS12 (at least my model - i7, 4000HD).

Just a heads up

 

There are new drivers for Haswell XPS 12 too.

... except they aren't new? Did Dell just re-release old drivers? Someone tell me what's going on here.

EDIT: some of them seem to have new version numbers, while others don't.

 

Thanks for the swift response and I look forward to hearing how it performs.

 

So I've just updated to Windiws 8.1 and I've found some issues I've managed to fix that might save others a few headaches. The first thing I noticed was the touchscreen stopped working, or became uncalibrated. This was fixed as soon as I updated the BIOS from A05 to A07 on the dell site. The second thing is that suddenly the font in applications (including my browser) became very blurry and hard to read even though it was perfect on windows. This is because MS have added DPI-scaling in Windows 8.1 but have disabled it by default. To enable, right click on your desktop and click personalize. Then click Display down the bottom left and finally tick the box that says "Let me choose one scaling level for all my displays" and restart.

Hope this helps people, if I find anything else I'll post it

 

Actually I believe MS enabled DPI scaling by default, which is causing the problem.

In my case, sometimes W8.1 thinks that the default manual scaling (125%) is bigger than it should be, so what I did was play around with the custom scaling for a while and then put it back to 125%.

 

None of the ones I've been following are new (video, touchpad, BIOS, sound). The version numbers are the same for these -- Dell just updated the "release" date to now without changing anything. This is something Dell does sometimes, and it's really annoying because it makes the release date useless for determining whether you're on the latest drivers or not.

Actually, the BIOS seems to have disappeared entirely -- it doesn't appear at all for me now, even with that extra tickbox that usually makes it show. There used to be 20 total downloads for the Haswell XPS 12, and now there are 18.

Are any of them new?

 

Odd thing - it seems I have to restart every time I switch to another WiFi connection, as it'll take ages to connect otherwise (if at all).

 

Just letting everyone know, the xps 12 with the 4650 and hd5000 is offered at New XPS 12 Convertible Ultrabook and Tablet PC Details | Dell Canada

I got mine about 4 weeks ago, and it's pretty amazing. Ran battlefield 3 25-30 fps on low with razor's game booster

 

Quoting myself just to note that all 20 downloads are there again, and the BIOS is back -- with a new version, A03. I'm going to install it now. If I don't edit an additional comment on how it goes into this post then... well, you'll know that the new BIOS bricked my laptop or something.

Nothing else is changed that I can tell, and the "new" drivers dated a few days ago still don't seem to actually be new. Perhaps the other "missing" driver is new now that it's back, but I'm not sure which one that is.

*edit* New BIOS installed. Don't notice anything different, but of course I probably wouldn't. I'm kind of hoping that the triggerhappy fan has been dialed back, but it would take more than a minute to see that. A note: the wifi forgot my password after the restart, so make sure you know it before you run the new BIOS.

*editedit* No bricking, it just took a few minutes to install =P And those price raises are interesting -- the Dell US site actually dropped the higher-end units by several hundred dollars a few weeks after launch, I guess when they realized that $1700 as the cheapest configuration with a 256GB SSD was unreasonable.

 

What gives lol? On the Dell New Zealand site, they've started offering a i3/4GB RAM/80GB SSD model for the same price as they were previously offering their i5/4/128 model, which is now at the same price as they were previously offering their i7/8/128 model (which, incidentally, is the discounted price at which I got my i7/8/256 model, whose original price remains unchanged).

 

It's a shame that Dell Canada, like Dell Australia, think that limiting the SSD size of XPS12s to only 256GB is a good idea.

 

While I agree it's silly, you should never really pay for a factory-installed larger SSD anyway. A lightning-fast monster of a Samsung 1TB SSD can be had for $500-something. A 250GB SSD is a puny $178 on Amazon right now. Dell's prices for larger factory-installed SSDs just aren't worth it. And, that's not assuming some huge technical knowledge to allow users to install new drives -- it's really easy. If I can do it, almost anyone can. (And bear in mind that you can sell the original SSD to recover a chunk of the new one.)

Completely unrelated: has anyone else found that Windows 8.1 turned their wifi device into "wifi 2." It's now "wifi 2" that connects to a network, and not the simple "wifi" it used to be. This is what Windows does when you have more than one network device -- it numbers them. Looking in the device manager with hidden devices visible, I see that I now have a number of "doubled" devices where the same device shows up a second time, and Windows now thinks its using the second one instead of the first. My hardware has not actually changed, obviously. Seems like a rather random side-effect of upgrading to 8.1. Anyone else seeing this? And even if not, does anyone know how to get rid of those "ghost" devices? It annoys me that my network screen shows "wifi 2"...

 

http://puu.sh/4UsGj.jpg

My connection icon displays like this^ when I am not connected to the internet (in this case, I turned on Airplane Mode, but the Airplane Mode icon wasn't displaying). Hovering the mouse over it gives me "Unidentified Network - No Internet Access".

Even when I *am* connected, when I hover my mouse over the icon, the pop-up gives me the name and status of the connection I'm on, but underneath it is "Unidentified Network - No Internet Access", as if I'm connected to two networks.

Both of these have been happening since before 8.1. I don't think it has any real effects on my connectivity, but it still irks me.

 

Are you sure that's right? The Samsung 1Tb won't fit in the XPS12 which needs mSATA which is much smaller physically. The largest mSATA SSD still seems to be the Samsung 512Gb which isn't available to buy retail, at least in the UK. The largest retail one is 480Gb and the difference in price between the 256Gb and the 512Gb when I got mine was, if I remember right, less than $USD200 and that included a better processor. It also means that, with all the issues some have with the computer, Dell have no ablity to argue than a user upgrade of the SSD 'damaged' the motherboard.

 

You're right, of course -- I was tossing out SATAIII numbers without a second thought. The cheapest 480 msata SSD I found is still close to $400, with a 250 about half that -- and no TB option at all at that size. Looking at the current XPS prices, you'd still be better off installing your own upgrades (again bearing in mind that you can sell the original drive easily enough) , but it's not nearly as pronounced a difference.

Dell has said repeatedly in their own tech forums that they don't care if you install a new SSD (linked in this thread as well, although a ways back). The new drive isn't covered by the XPS warranty, of course, but then it should have its own anyway. I've never heard of Dell making accusations like that, regardless. Dell is notorious for cheerfully attempting to fix anything, no matter the cost or likelihood of success. In fact, Dell's problem is that they'll happily replace every part in your machine rather than actually sit down and think about what might really be wrong.

 

Man alive, I've updated to Windows 8.1, and my Dell is completely jacked up.

Something is really up with the Video - I got all sorts of artifacts on every image displayed in IE11 and Chrome, and for some reason my computer burns through battery like no other, even when it's apparently in standby. I believe I've updated all the drivers on the Dell website, but this thing is screwy right now. This morning, after leaving my fully charged Dell unplugged all night, I was told my battery was critically low. Am I supposed to wait for Dell to release their version of Windows 8.1?? I updated from the Windows App Store, but this just isn't working. Now I'm not sure what to do - use the restore partition and go back to factory default?

This sucks

 

The main 8.1 problem that I'm having is that I've lost my 2-fingered touchpad tapping again. I've tried turning this feature on & off to no avail--any other ideas??? Two fingered scrolling is still working; it's just the tapping (to bring up the right-click menu) that seems to be gone.

 

So I had the old video driver rolled back somehow, now I'm the one with the last 4 numbers of 3316 in it, and the weird looking images are gone, but I believe prior I had a big time issue where I was getting some odd video screen flicker.

Still don't know my battery is draining so fast.

 

Hmm. Well, if the worst I get from 8.1 is that I now have a bunch of non-existent wireless devices in the manager and have to put up with using "wifi 2," then I think I'm happy. Sounds like you all got hit a lot harder. I think you can all expect some fairly quick updates from either Dell of MS, but it sucks in the meantime.

The new BIOS does nothing for the aggressive fan, incidentally. It fixed none of the little problems I'm having with the machine, although I assume it did something. Anyone with 8.1 issues should probably install it, since it was released at the same time -- that could be coincidence, but there might also be changes for compatibility with 8.1.

 

Just FYI, I did the Windows 8.1 upgrade two days ago, and have experienced exactly zero issues. Touchpad, wifi, etc. all work perfectly (well, with normal Windows 8 quirks). about to go install that new BIOS now.

 

I think the option in the Dell Touchpad setting is for 2-fingered *clicking*, not *tapping*.

For 2-fingered tapping, edit this registry:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Synaptics\SynTP\TouchPadRMIHID2c]
change the value of "2FingerTapAction" into "2".

This is how I get my 2-fingered tapping before and after the upgrade to windows 8.1.

 

New Cypress touchpad driver available for 8.1 (for 3rd gen intel XPS12)
not intended for XPS12, but seems good, only just installed it though.
2.5.1.59

 

I actually saw this fix elsewhere & tried it; it's not working for me. Has anyone done anything else?

 

I know it's obvious, but just in case you haven't tried it... uninstall and reinstall the driver?

 

Actually, I tried the fix above again AND tried turning the settings on and off AGAIN (I had done all these things before), and for some reason, it worked this time. No idea why...but I'm happy it did!!!

 

Sorry folks... might have been a false alarm.

After updating display (I had it installed, saw issues, then installed older version over it, then "rolled back" to the newer one (last 4 is 3316 in the driver window for the display). Might have been just a bad install...maybe I should do a full uninstall and clean install of the latest driver, but right now things are working again, and I tried a couple games.

Also, the battery eating thing didn't repeat last night...granted I actually slept the laptop by toggling the slider on the side as opposed to letting it put itself to sleep/hibernate. So it might be an odd setting toggle somewhere.

 

Anyone else have a problem with external USB bus powered portable drives? If I copy files to or from an external HDD, it loses the connection part way through. No problem with flash drives or, so far, an external bus powered SSD. Seems to me there is not enough power coming from the USB ports. Probably going to have to phone Tech Support but does this happen to anyone else?

 

I had Windows 8.1 preview installed which cannot be easily upgraded wo Windows 8.1.
So I formatted back to Windows 8 then installed 8.1 from the Store.
Now that ive done this my WiFi is the flakiest its ever been! Uggggghhhhh, dropping out all over the shop!

Anyone got any tips? Ive downloaded the latsest driver.