XPS 14 UltraBook Owners Lounge

Sorry about that, after reading the responses from other folks I realized my original statement wasn't all that clear. Oops. Yes, mount the ISO from your existing OS or on some other machine, using a tool like MagicDisk or any other tool that can mount and ISO to look like a drive. Then, copy the files to a formatted USB drive. If you are planning to use UEFI boot, the USB drive needs to be formatted to FAT32 b/c UEIF cannot boot to an NTFS formatted drive.

So, I had MagicDisk installed, downloaded the Win 8 iso to my machine, mounted the ISO with MagicDisk, formatted my USB drive to FAT32, open the virtual drive where the ISO was mounted, and copied the contents of that virtual drive (which was the Windows 8 install disk contents) to the FAT32 USB drive just like I was copying the content of any dvd/drive.

From there, I rebooted, switched the BIOS over to UEFI, popped the USB drive, saved the change to UEFI and rebooted. It picked up Windows 8 and installed.

You really only have to go this route if you are installing the OS with UEFI boot. If you are just going to use the legacy BIOS booting, you can just get the windows usb/dvd tool from Microsoft and create it right from the ISO (no mounting or copying). It creates a bootable USB drive w/ whatever OS iso you have available.

Microsoft Store Online

Hope that clears it up.

 

What are the advantages of UEFI over legacy BIOS mode using Windows 8?

 

Instead of a mounting utility, you might give 7-Zip a try, which basically allows you to open and view pretty much any compressed file you can throw at it, including iso's.

-Matt

 

Thanks. I've used WinRAR for that before too. I know folks who use 7zip, but I've never tried it. I keep MagicDisk installed b/c I'm frequently just installing and don't need to copy the contents out anywhere (Visual Studio, SQL Server, Office, etc). So mounting and installing from there is what I usually use it for and it was just there and didn't have to futz w/ anything else.

 

Folks, fwiw, I'm up to 21 second boot times. No idea why. I'm at a loss. Can't say I know exactly when it started.

I've checked the recent Windows updates (none to speak of since 10/2). I've removed all of the software I've installed back to 10/3-ish. That includes removing Acronis True Image, some Azure utilities, Google Chrome browser. I also disabled SQL Server services from starting up. Nothing has any impact on it.

Very, very odd...

 

Thanks, that's more than clear.

For clarity of others, the Win7 tool formats to NTFS by default.

 

hi i Think to buy the xps 14 , and i Wondering if the wifi problem as been fix, and there is other problem that i need to know about ?

 

If you are considering the Intel integrated graphics version, then for the most part, yes, the problem is resolved with the latest video and wireless drivers on the Dell Support site.

I went from completely useless beyond 10ft to pretty much working all over my house and a speed that was at least well above where my broadband connection tops out (20mbps). I only have 1 dead area that comes and goes now. It is at the furthest point away from my router, most # of walls/floors. In that area, my E6510 still connects w/ no trouble (3x3 intel 6300 card) where the XPS14 is non-functional (2x2 Intel 6235). I don't know if that is card related, or XPS related. I haven't had had time to test my V131 in that location to compare, been very busy.

Anyway...that's the case w/ the Intel graphics version. If you are looking at the NVidia version, not sure, some other folks w/ that version of the XPS14 will need to chime in.

 

What is the correlation of Wifi performance with the video card? Is there some evidence that Intel-integrated vs. nVidia discrete graphics makes a difference, or is it that there was an issue and an updated Intel video driver seemed to fix it?

 

I have no idea what the reason was, driver conflict I guess. There is also a post in the XPS 15 owners thread where someone indicated a Dell tech had mentioned there was a driver conflict w/ the wireless and video.

But I had gone thru every possible combination from Intel and Dell with drivers, etc. I ultimately was up to date with everything (latest drivers) and then happened to go to Dell Support in the midst of working w/ their last level of support/engineering and a new video driver was posted on 9/25 and 9/26 (XPS 14 and 15, don't recall the order). Upon loading that driver in Windows 7, I had completely solid, stable, fast connection.

Upon installing Windows 8, I had a completely stable connection as well, with the STOCK Windows 8 drivers. Most of which were dated 2011 (video and wireless). That was fine also. Latest video drivers on Dell Support will not install on Win 8. Latest wireless drivers on Dell Support installed with little difference that I could tell.

That's just my take after a couple of weeks of heavy research, driver install/uninstall, settings tweaked, etc.

I only said I don't know about the NVidia systems because they are a hybrid video solution. Sometimes they use Intel, others NVidia, depending on what you are doing. I'm not sure how those drivers come into play (or not) w/ NVidia capable systems, that the only reason I said what I did. Someone else will have to confirm that. There was at least ONE person a few posts/pages back that had all the latest and NVidia that said their wireless was still crappy. I don't know if they had updated the Intel video or not. Again, need someone w/ the NVidia based video to update EVERYTHING, including Intel video drivers, and post whether their wireless is stable and performs well.

Personally, I think there are MULTIPLE things at play here. Wireless drivers, video drivers, case design (if you recall reading my 'rotate toward the router' testing), maybe also the newness of the Intel 6235 card, maybe the hybrid bt/wifi nature of the 6235 (although my V131 has the hybrid 1030 card w/ no issues, but it's older w/ more driver updates and fine tuning from Intel).

 

Thanks for the explanation, hylton. Useful information for sure.

 

Sure, glad to help, or at least try. I'm not a hardware guy, at least not at this level. I can swap out a drive, or do minor parts replacement. But that's about it.

In the end, I guess we are all experiencing owning a first-gen product that is still getting the kinks worked out by Dell. On one hand, that's understandable. But this isn't some goofy problem w/ one router or a couple of environments at peoples homes. This seems to be systemic w/ the new XPS ultrabooks. I think it was poor testing or poor judgement (if they knew about this ahead of the release) on Dell's part to put these models out w/ this issue.

I still question whether I'm actually fully functional. I should not have the range and stability issues in my worst location that I'm having. I could buy some performance degradation w/ the 2x2 6235 over the 3x3 6300, but not total annihilation of the connection. I literally have to disconnect/reconnect from the system tray and HOPE that it's a decent connection the next time. I can't even open a photo across my internal network (stored on a NAS) w/o it going belly up from this particular location in my home. It's not a delay, it actually whacks the connection because it's just hammering the network. I can do whatever, however, w/ the E6510 from the same location.

But at least I can work now in MOST places in my home. I'll probably end up with my MOCA cable devices and a second wireless access point back in the mix at this juncture. Just to get coverage in the opposite corner of the house.

 

Just an update to my earlier post. I have gotten to test the Wifi on my laptop a bit more, from various locations around my house, and also at some client locations where I was several walls away from the wifi. I have had no issues, I get full bars every time and the speed has always been whatever my internet connection allows. I haven't tried transferring files within my house between computers, but internet speeds up to 20 mbp/s have all been good.

 

Nvidia hybrid owner here.

With Windows 8 Preview and using the drivers available at Dell's website (dated june) I haven't had any issue with wireless since day one.

It works just as well as any other device (I have used it at home, at the office and at several coffee shops).

I haven't been able to download the latest drivers (dated september) because of what seem to be a problem with Dell's website.

 

Has no one figured out why Windows 7 takes much longer to boot than it should? Popped in a new 256GB SSD. Now, I've worked with many, many, many new Dell notebooks and desktops with SSD's. This notebook is considerably slower booting that any other.

The big delay seems to be during the Windows logo animation. It seems to sit forever.

I recall seeing a program that would log every startup process and how long it took to complete, but cannot find (or remember) what it was called. Anyone seen something like this? It would help identify what the heck is taking so long to start.

I got a bit lucky...picked up an XPS 14 from the Outlet with coupon (Dell Outlet New), an i5 with 4GB, and it came with a dead trackpad. Dell offered an exchange, and they wound up sending me an i7 with 8GB. Thanks, Dell.

 

Give msconfig a try -- on the "Boot" tab you'll see a "Boot log" option, which may be what you want. I'm also curious if you check the "No GUI boot" option if that saves you any boot time:

GUI Boot - Enable or Disable in Windows - Windows 7 Forums

-Matt

 

Boot log doesn't list times for boot items to load, it just lists what loads and what doesn't. I remember seeing a program that would give you a report of times for every driver, etc., that loads at startup. I just can't remember where I saw it!

The NOGUI option isn't it because all the other computers I have (and have setup for others) all have the animation and start very quickly with an SSD.

Thanks.

 

That was me that posted about wireless issues with Nvidia hybrid. About 2 weeks ago I returned the laptop. This was pre windows 8. I had nvidia latest driver and fairly certain I had latest intel driver but not 100% sure. On same floor of house as router, wireless was fine, in bedroom upstairs at opposite side of house, wireless would switch between 100% and 30% speed compared to 4 yr old HP laptop. I can't have a laptop for travel with wireless issues and Dell pretty much admitted it was a known problem. They thought at the time it was interference between drivers. Anyway, I waited till last day of return window and gave it back to best buy.

 

I wonder if Dell are going to update it at all when W8 comes out, or at least with Haswell.

 

On the boot times. With my initial win 8 uefi install it was booting in 8 seconds. At some point it shifted to 20 seconds. Not a clue why and have not attempted to figure it out yet.

 

Not sure if L421X owners are following the L521X owners' thread, but the following was posted by a Dell rep yesterday evening:

"Dell is aware of customer feedback regarding wireless performance on the XPS 14 and 15. We are working diligently to eliminate root cause and will provide improvements which we will make available to all affected customers present and future. I profusely apologize if I misled anyone with my post, I was not aware of all the facts. I will continue to work with the product and development team and will make sure of all claims before I post them on this forum."

 

Thansk GoRU -- I don't know the backstory with the rep -- do you know what they're apologizing about?

-Matt

 

The Dell rep was apologizing for a recent post she made stating that the latest BIOS and video drivers updates would fix the known WiFi issues. After the owners had updated their systems, they quickly posted that the updates did not solve the issues.

What I find disheartening is that Dell continues to sell these systems (L421X and L521X) with known WiFi issues (and other issues) that they have yet to correct. Do they understand that customer loyalty is fragile and consumers quickly move onto another reliable brand? I really want to like & purchase the L421X, but with all these great posts by current owners detailing issues Dell will not recognize, it's easy to turn elsewhere and make a purchase.

 

I think Dell does recognize it at this point. It's just taken months to get there. But, (A) I don't think they know what to do w/ it. They would take a bath taking them all back, which I think they should offer to do at this point and (B) They don't know the extent of the problem yet and (C) The left hand and the right hand aren't communicating, i.e. various levels of tech support.

The latest drivers _DO_ address the problem to the point that many will find it acceptable to no different than anything else they have owned. With the latest drivers, either Win 7 or 8, I am down to only long range, multiple wall issues. I think there is still a problem, but it is not enough for me to spend any more time on the phone w/ Dell. My last communication with them was that my case would be left in a state to be 're-opened' for the next 30 days should I determine there were more problems. That was early last week. I am still toying with calling/emailing back and doing just that. But I don't think there is much they can do other than time and effort. So it's either wait or push for a return.

I got routed to the last level of tech support, the folks that work directly w/ the engineers. I was told that if they needed to, they would fly a Dell engineer somewhere in an attempt to deduce what was going on with these units. True or not, I don't think there is much else they can do when you get to that point. They are scrambling to fix it as best they can, but oh yea, they need to communicate from the top down that there is an issue, acknowledge it, and begin to deal with it. As I said, I think they should also offer refund to folks that request it. This is way beyond a few bad builds, some faulty equipment, bad batch of wifi/video cards. This is a major issue w/ drivers, case design, and interoperability.

For me, I'm not only concerned that the longer this goes, with no solution, that I'll be fighting wifi issues in my home office (my worst location) for the immediate future and maybe forever. I may have to go back to dual access points again for the short term to get around this.

 

I bought my XPS14 off the outlet 2 weeks ago. First thing I did was format it and put Win8 RTM on it. Build quality of this laptop is top of the line, I think we all agree. As for WiFi issues, haven't noticed them. Keep in mind, I bought the top of the line XPS M1330 with the LED screen before hand almost 5 years ago. This is my replacement laptop. This laptop streams HD movies the same as my old XPS that had the dual band card in it. I think Win8 makes this laptop what it should be. If you have screen problems, send it back.

I bought the I7, 8GB, 630m, 500GB w/ 32GB SSD off outlet. I replaced the 32GB SSD with a 128GB SSD, changed the BIOS to AHCI for the hard drives, laptop on a cold boot starts in 6-8 seconds. Portal 2 and similar type games, play flawless. I am happy.

Btw, get a good router that can do dual band. If you have a $30-$80 router that you bought years ago, guess what, it sucks. I have a Netgear WNDR4500 and no issues with a 2000 sq ft house one story.

 

So, I'm a dummy of the N-th degree. Fixed my slow boot issue. I had disabled 'hibernate' to gain some disk space. Well, that's the whole freakin' underpinnings of Windows 8 Hybrid Boot (which is where they get the fast boot times). It basically shuts all apps down, then hibernates. So it's Windows 7 Hibernate with shutting down apps. Sneaky Sneaky.

I caught it by researching Windows 8 boot speed issues. Found the tools I used to use that log and analyze Windows booting, it's all still part of the Windows SDK for Windows 8. Anyway, I logged the whole booting process and went in and notice the SMSSInit and WinInit were taking the bulk of the 20 second boot time. Then my searches on Windows 8 SMSSInit speed led to a blog post about how Windows 8 achieved such fast boot times. It's all in the secret sauce, aka, Hibernate. Tricky Tricky.

Re-enabled hibernate and I'm back to around 8 second boot times.

It eats 8gb of my 128gb SSD, but worth it. Guess I may have to free up 8gb on the mSATA and point hiberfil.sys over there.

Good to know I'm not nuts, just stupid.

CORRECTION: I went back and disabled the Legacy ROM option in the bios, so it's now UEFI Windows 8 fast boot. So it's really a 6-7 second boot at this point, well under 8. Nice!

 

Can anyone explain this? I consider myself knowledgeable when it comes to technology, but I'm at a loss here at what you guys are doing.

AFAIK, the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface is something manufacturers are starting to replace the traditional BIOS with. Are you guys saying that the XPS 14 Ultrabook has BOTH a traditional BIOS and UEFI and we can switch b/w both?

 

I'm trying to understand the gist of what you are saying. Hibernate is required for fast boot times with Windows 8? If so, do you hibernate the system when done, or power off? If power off, the hybernate file still speeds up a cold power on?

With regards to Windows 7, how does this address the issue of a slow cold boot with Windows 7? I, too, remove/disable Hibernate as I never use it (and would rather have the free space on my SSD).
But, comparing apples to apples, other systems with Hibernate OFF boot very quickly in Windows 7. There MUST be something wrong still.

 

Let me hit your questions first...

Yes, Windows 8 requires Hibernate to be enabled for these super fast boot times. I believe w/o Hibernate, Windows 8 might be a tad faster than Windows 7 (all other things equal), but not by much.

No, I don't hibernate, I power off (shut down). But, with Windows 8, when hibernate is enabled and you 'power off' or 'shut down', it's choosing to logoff and hibernate instead of a full shutdown like you are used to with Windows 7 and prior. Once you disable hibernate, you go back to (in essence) Windows 7 boot/shutdown behavior.

Yes, hibernate is being used by Windows 8 to seriously speed up the boot process. It is basically allowing Windows to bypass the two longest processes it has to run (SMSSInit and WinloginInit). Those 2 process do all the driver loading, Windows loading, etc. Basically, hibernate allows Windows to keep all that cached to disk. Think of it this way, why should Windows load your graphics driver EACH time when you never change it. All Windows really needs to do is log you out (which kills all your programs and frees up any memory used by software you've been running).

I don't know, with regard to your Windows 7 questions. If there are Windows 7 systems booting super duper fast, I don't know what they are doing other than well written BIOS or UEFI boot. Windows 7 loads everything, everytime, on a cold boot (after a shutdown).

Remember though, I was getting 20 second boot times with Windows 8 and no hibernate. That's pretty fast. I would expect Windows 7 to be something not much higher than that w/ UEFI and a pure cold boot. If you are talking Windows 7 booting in something like 15 seconds or less, then yes, there is something else at play, I suppose at the hardware level.

Keep in mind, I'm just now reading up on this, so take this all w/ a grain of salt. Windows 8 Hybrid Boot (MS's term) is how they are achieving fast boot times with Windows 8. There isn't anything 'new' really in the OS, just smoke-and-mirrors, albeit impressive. Basically, they have eliminated the need to reload/initialize much of what is done during a true boot. How? Hibernate. They originally called this Logoff+Hibernate, now it's called Hybrid Boot. But it's exactly that. It logs you out (so that shuts down your apps, etc) and hibernates the machine. Hibernate suspends your apps and keeps them their, persisting whatever you were doing to disk. But it's still hibernate in both cases.

 

All this talk about cold boot times made me go get my stopwatch: 33 from cold; 23 after post. Since I never do a 'cold' boot unless I'm installing an update I really had no idea what these times were. While there might be Windows 7 systems out there that are seeing 15 second cold boots I doubt they're laptops with ULV processors.

vanndamage refers to 6-8 second cold boot times which would only be possible on Windows 7 with a Rapid Start Partition enabled. Technically, this isn't a 'cold boot' since RST is still a suspend-to-disk technology but it's Intel's approach rather than Microsoft's approach when dealing with S4. RST pretty much makes S4 (hibernate) and S3 (sleep) resume time identical. Don't know the voodoo details on how RST does this and don't much care - my system turns on in less than 8 seconds regardless of how long since I last used it. I don't turn my system off via the power button: Windows Power Management takes it to S3 in 10 minutes on battery; RST takes it to S4 in 120 minutes.

Hylton, I use my SSD for the RST partition so I can't speak to the impact of using the mSATA. I seem to recall when I ran ATTO the mSATA was quite a bit slower than my Samsung 830 so I put the partition there.

I haven't read up much on how Windows 8 handles the boot sequence but I'm guessing it's very similar to how RST works. Wondering whether there's any point in installing RST when I install W8 in a few weeks. Another Intel technology that I'm curious to see implemented with W8 is Smart Connect which works with just about nothing right now. If Metro tiles can use Smart Connect it'll make for a much more dynamic start screen.

 

Jim, thanks for that info on RST, makes sense and I'd have to say that's how anyone w/ Windows 7 booting fast is getting it done. For now, I'm using my mSATA for file storage anyway and I don't have enough room to grab 8gb on it anyway. I upgraded my XPS14 with a Samsung 830 (128gb) because it was a super deal, but I'm definitely gonna transition to a 256gb soon and it won't be an issue (space).

For anyone that wants to get into the nitty-gritty like I did last night, here are the two articles that cleared it all up for me and made me realized I had been the cause of my own downfall. It explains how to log your boot process, interpret the graphs in the resulting ETL file. The second link really gets into what JimConley was alluding to, which is how Windows 8 boots (compared to Windows 7).

Trace why Windows 8 boots, shutsdown or hibernate slowly - MSFN Forum
What is Hybrid Boot in Windows 8 and how does it work? - MSFN Forum

Enjoy!

 

Couldn't help myself: ATTO results for SSD vs mSATA on XPS 13. Wish I'd done the 5400 spinner before I pulled it.

Samsung mSATA 32GB ATA Device

Peak Write: 91 MB/s
Peak Read: 408 MB/s

Samsung SSD 830 Series Device

Peak Write: 343 MB/s
Peak Read: 546 MB/s

So there you have it: SSD writes are 4 times as fast as the mSATA and reads are about 35% faster. It's nice to see that the SSD reads are approaching real-world SATA 3 limits.

I was scratching my head for a minute about how you could restore 8GB of memory in less than 16 seconds with a 546 MB/s read rate. Presumably only active memory is written/read. On my current system I'm running at 21% use or roughly 1.6GB. That would translate to about 3 seconds read time at 550 MB/s which I can buy.

Returning to the issue of using the mSATA as a hibernation device - quite a bit slower to go to sleep but in real-world use I'd guess it would add less than a second to the restore. For those short on SSD space it's probably a reasonable compromise.

 

Hmmm... So no no one here really knows what they're talking about when they "explain" or describe UEFI functionality...

 

XPS 15 can boot both as well. But you will have to reinstall the OS when switching though.

 

"Hmmm... So no no one here really knows what they're talking about when they "explain" or describe UEFI functionality..."

That's a bit of a leap but to answer your question:

The XPS 14 firmware is capable of operating in either UEFI mode or BIOS (legacy) mode. A lot of the confusion comes from the fact firmware and BIOS have been interchangeable terms for such a long time (Dell's website lists the latest firmware update under the BIOS category, for instance).

From a user standpoint the most imminent benefit of UEFI is probably support for booting >2 TB drives using GPT. UEFI doesn't seem to significantly reduce boot times over BIOS firmware from what I can see - the Windows 8 Fast Boot option in the XPS 14 firmware is 'probably' a feature that enables fast hibernation file loading like we were discussing above. I haven't put W8 on my system so I can't confirm and, as with most firmware updates by InSyde and others, it's not really well documented what the changes are. The most interesting (and controversial) part of UEFI is the ability for SecureBoot which is great for security, not so great for end-users. UEFI can prevent the loading of OS drivers/boot loaders that don't have a digital signature. For business and government this means no unauthorized OS can be installed which significantly beefs up security. For owners, we may find that some hardware going forward is OS locked which would prevent running Debian for instance being run on a machine bought with an MS license. I doubt we'll see this kind of implementation for awhile but if the subsidization model of computers changes towards something more like what Apple uses (sell the device at very close to cost, make profit off of apps and content) it's likely we'll see this.

krayziehustler raises a good point - you either install on UEFI or BIOS but you can't change afterwards.

 

i would like to point out that UEFI on my XPS 15 boots 2-3 seconds faster than legacy BIOS. Not much but noticeable.

 

That's strange. I build systems for people on a daily basis and I've never come across a motherboard that has both a traditional BIOS and an UEFI.

I don't work with notebooks frequently though so it may be normal for notebooks to have both.

The only other setting I know of in most BIOSes that would require reinstalling the OS (or changing a registry value before changing the mode in the BIOS) would be switching from legacy IDE to AHCI or RAID for the SATA controller.

I also just looked around my XPS14's BIOS and didn't see any setting or option to change to UEFI.

 

The EUFI option is only available with the A09 or A11 BIOS updates. Not sure what happened to A10!

My work HP also has EUFI or legacy.

I rebuilt my Dell on EUFI to try and fix the Win 7 slow cold boot issue but I don't seem to be in true EUFI mode. Legacy is still present and if I disable it, the screen gets stretched and chops 50% of the display off so I have to leave both enabled. If I disable EUFI it fails to boot so god knows what I've done.

As for someone saying earlier no Ultrabook with Win7 could boot quickly - well, I briefly had a Samsung Series 9 with Win 7 and SSD. It booted from fully off to desktop in 8 seconds. I have a video link here to prove it. The XPS should be equal to this in my opinion.

http://youtu.be/Hzg7txav34U

 

Once you enter setup, tab over to BOOT and then down to the last entry 'Boot List Option'. You can switch that to UEFI.

 

That might have been me, but I didn't mean to say Windows 7 couldn't be made to boot fast, just that if it was, something else was going on at the hardware or suspend/hibernate level. All I meant was that Windows 7 doesn't do what Windows 8 does with regard to the boot process when Hibernate is enabled. I don't think you can get Windows 7 to boot in 8 seconds if it's fully loading all drivers and itself into memory from scratch. Neither does Windows 8. There has to be some smoke-n-mirrors going on with things cached in memory or to disk to achieve that boot speed.

Basically, seems they've blurred the lines between what we all know as 'boot'.

I noticed that 'disable load legacy option rom' after you switch to UEFI, but I don't notice any difference w/ it on or off. But that's w/ Windows 8. Maybe Windows 7 needs that enabled to map something correctly for the OS to work w/ UEFI.

 

Monitor Calibration Tests: Black Point

Could someone tell me when the black box appears on their laptops.

 

I think the UEFI option for consumer hardware is a pretty recent development - case in point is the XPS 14 which only added the UEFI option with firmware A09 (which I've got) and A11 (which I can't find...). With W8 I think you'll see it becoming the default going forward.

I'd expect you'd find some of the motherboards you work with, if updated to the most current firmware, would have UEFI options.

 

Yeah it is kind of recent. Most of the Asus, Gigabyte and ASRock motherboards I've worked on for the past year and a half have come out of the box with full UEFI implementation.

 

IsLNdbbOi:

Interesting perspective - I haven't worked with a desktop board for a few years now and my XPS 14 is the first laptop firmware I've encountered UEFI on. From checking out the wikipedia it sounds like it's been commonplace on desktops (possibly because 3 TB boot drives are possible?) since 2011 or so. Even the earlier firmwares for the XPS 14 were BIOS (when I upgraded to A09 I had a 'what the hell is this?' moment when I saw the option) but Microsoft's requirement for UEFI on machines certified for Windows 8 seems to be driving universal implementation. I'm guessing a BIOS firmware will be archaic within the year.

So here's a question regarding desktop boards - have you seen a 'legacy option' in any firmwares you've worked with or has BIOS been completely done away with?

 

In the boards i've worked with the past year or two, the full UEFI inplimentations were just that, full UEFI implimentations. No options at all to switch back to a traditional BIOS.

 

Both my XPS 14 and HP ProBook 6470b have a toggle option for either legacy or EUFI.

 

Must be something unique to laptops then.

 

FWIW, noticed last night I didn't have brightness control using fn F4/F5. Hopped back out to setup and re-enabled 'load legacy option rom', which disables Windows 8 fast boot. It's still UEFI, but I guess it's some kind of hybrid where it loads some legacy support? You guys seem to know more about BIOS/UEFI than I do. But anyway, I've got brightness control back. Other fn keys worked fine either way, but not brightness. Boot times don't seem to be significantly different, maybe a second or two.

 

I tried a Windows 8 RTM install this weekend and it was pretty abysmal on a couple of counts, specifically video and touchpad drivers:

With the video I installed the latest MS WHQL drivers and found that unless I disabled the HD4000 driver there was significant (unusable) tearing especially on the Metro screen. Then tried latest drivers from NVidia and Intel and no improvement. With HD4000 disabled everything was fine.

There are no Synaptics Windows 8 drivers to be found either at Dell or at Synaptics which means more than a few gestures aren't working properly yet.

Other than that there was nothing significant although I'm unclear whether the Intel RST driver should be installed or not. The accelerometer driver also won't install but since I've got an SSD I don't much care.

I also found Guild Wars 2 wouldn't install but that's (probably) a software issue.

So with 11 days until official release I'm curious just where XPS 14 drivers stand and whether there's any point in taking advantage of the $15 upgrade. I also found the MS Store is pretty much lacking of anything particularly useful. Even a decent live tile for RSS news seems to be nowhere to be found yet.

I know a few other forum members have tried Windows 8. Are you experiencing similar problems or is this the current state of affairs?

 

I'm currently using the synaptics drivers at the Dell site: Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States]


For the HD4000: Windows 8 Preview Drivers

I'm using the standard configuration for the XPS14 (only available in my country), with hybrid graphics and an i5.

Both are working ok for me.

I got the Nvidia drivers through the Nvidia updater.

Cheers!