XPS 15 (Haswell) Owner's Lounge

I look forward to your results from windows 10.

 

Installed it as a VM so cannot say for sure if it works properly natively but I guess its better to wait for final release. Otherwise, even as a VM it runs pretty smoothly(though I haven't done any development work or gaming on it for obvious reasons).

Edit: I have a question of my own. Which graphics driver is to be installed in a VM? I tried installing both intel and nvidia drivers but both failed to install. As a consequence, I'm having to run the win10 VM at 1920X1080 in stretched mode. TIA.

 

I was updating my BIOS from A06 to A07. The computer froze midway. The power key was non responsive at that moment. So, I waited for the battery to drain and tried reconnecting and turning the computer back on. However, the computer is still nonresponsive, the power key does not work and the computer does not do anything when I push the power key. Any hints on how to fix this sad issue?

 

You may have read post # 7102 already, he had the same issue. It looks like you've already tried what worked for him.

 

Yes, same issue. However, i did not dodge the bullet and the computer does not work at all now.

 

I did a quick search to see what help is out there. This seems the closest, different model on dell site but some steps that may help if you can even get that far into power up.

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/19487684

 

Sorry this happened to you--I got lucky that my XPS15 recovered from the bios update failure/freeze--I don't have any knowledge on how to fix your situation unfortunately . . . it seems that although the Bios update from A06 to A07 works for many, there is a significant minority of people for whom it fails with potentially disastrous results . . . for other readers of this forum: if you are out of warranty or if A06 is working fine for you, I wouldn't recommend trying to update to A07 . . .

N123

 

You never install drivers for your actual hardware in a VM. The virtual GPU that VMs use depends on the hypervisor you're using (and sometimes your settings for that guest VM), and every hypervisor has a software package called tools/integration components/whatever that usually mounts as a CD in the guest VM and installs drivers for the virtual devices such as the GPU, audio, NIC, etc. On Windows 8.1 and above running as guests on a Hyper-V host, no installation is necessary since those components are built into Windows itself. And on 8.1 and above when running on Hyper-V, you can enable "Enhanced Session Mode" to the guest VM, which creates something very similar to an RDP session and therefore allows bidirectional audio redirection, clipboard sharing, true multi-display support for the guest session, mounting printers/host drives/some host-attached USB devices, etc.

If you have 8.1 Pro as your host, I'd strongly recommend Hyper-V. It's crazy fast, partly because it's a Tier 1 hypervisor whereas any others you can run on top of a Windows host are necessarily Tier 2. It doesn't have some of the more consumer-oriented features that VMware Workstation and others do (like full USB device redirection, Coherence Mode, 3D GPU virtualization, guest-to-host replicated folders, etc) because Microsoft essentially brought their enterprise hypervisor product to their consumer OS with very few changes, but if it meets your needs functionally, I think you'll be happy with the performance.

 

I just finished a full reinstall after a factory reset. I uninstalled the Intel HD graphics driver, rebooted the PC and installed Intel Driver Update utility. It scanned and showed me updates for graphics, wifi and bluetooth. I installed all three. Everythings is working fine so far. So, you don't have to depend on the Dell version of graphics driver.

The version I have currently is Intel Graphics Driver 10.18.14.4080.

 

I have been experiencing issues with the audio that comes out of the laptop speakers and audio jack.
During playback of (anything), there is an occasional 1/2 second distortion "bzzzt" kind of sound that will happen which is inconsistent, but happens at least once every minute or so.
This sound comes out of the internal speakers and the audio jack.

This audio distortion/glitch does NOT happen when streaming to a Bluetooth device, nor streaming using DLNA - so it is solely a result of the audio (card ?) in this top-tier xps15 laptop.

I have tried un-installing the realtek drivers - leaving only the windows driers - same issue.
I re-installed the realtek drivers - same issue.

Is there a discrete audio card/board in this laptop - that can be re-seated or replaced - or is it integrated into the motherboard ?
I would like to fix this issue, as it is annoying - but not if it means replacing the motherboard.

Any ideas ?

 

.

 

I fixed this issue with a factory restore, I don't know if there is a easier way.

 

I posted about this issue a long time ago. I encounter it very rarely in general use, although I do have one segment of a couple different audio files that triggers the behavior somewhat reliably. Trying different drivers and such always seemed to fix it for a while, but none of those fixes turned out to last. I did a clean install right when I got the system, fwiw. It doesn't bother me much because I encounter it very rarely, but yes it's there. Maybe it's an audio chip firmware issue (doubt it's upgradeable) or perhaps just an as-yet unresolved driver bug.

 

I believe that this is a different issue, someone has reported that CPU goes to 100% while issue happens.
It's not possible to tolerate it, because it happens too often 1 or 2 minutes while anything is played.
Most likely some kind of update, maybe some recent Windows update, has introduced this issue, moreover several XPS owners reported this problem recently.
When I restored my XPS the issue was fixed, and it still remains fixed after all updates.

 

edit

 

No, I've got that issue too. That issue happens much more frequently (but much less consistently with any particular content), and the nature of the distortion is qualitatively different from the issue I posted about earlier (and noticed long before this more recent issue). I get the distortion you're talking about a lot more frequently when I'm doing something intensive in one of my VMs.

 

I have to report that after factory restore, my CPU temps seem dropped in idle, but this could be only a suggestion, I have no data to proof it.

 

It seems that performances of new Dell Wireless AC 1560 adapter (based on Broadcom chip like Macbook) are much better than Intel AC 7260 adapter.
This is review of new XPS 13 with Dell AC1560 compared with XPS 15 with AC 7260, AC 1560 transfer speed is double than Intel AC 7260:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8983/dell-xps-13-review/3





I wonder if it's possible to buy Dell AC 1560 adapter is some way, also could be interesting to know how is even the new Intel AC 7265.

 

I have updated Intel graphic driver, according to info supplied by Intel control panel now the support for directX is upgraded from 11.0 to 11.1.
Installation was very easy, just uninstall old Intel graphic driver from control panel, restart, then you can install the standard driver downloaded from Intel website without any request.

 

I would have thought it was a hardware issue rather than a driver problem - but who knows.
I cannot remember exactly when I started to notice the garbled distortion, but now that I notice it, it bothers me when I am trying to enjoy music or movies, etc.
Oh well, I will just try to get used to it or hope that a potential future software update fixes it.

ON ANOTHER NOTE:
My pc was asleep - on battery.
I opened it up, it woke up, and the screen was flickering like crazy - and had a corrupted/distorted image. GREAT.
It actually seemed to get worse if I moved my finger around the trackpad.
In any event, I was able to sleep, restart, shutdown, etc - to see if that would "clear" it. Nope.
The screen was flickering EVEN ON BOOTUP - (the screen with the Dell logo was also flickering with a corrupted/distorted image).
Nothing I could do would seem to fix it.
And then - after around 5 minutes or so - it "calmed down". The video returned to normal - as if nothing had ever happened.
I ran the full stress test diagnostics - it found no problems.
What on earth is going on here ???!!
Since this happened out of the blue - I am expecting it to happen again.
I "baby" this laptop - so experiencing any issues like this is extremely frustrating and disappointing.

PS - over the last 2 weeks or so, the laptop has frozen off and on, where the fans kick into high speed the down, then high speed then down again. Looking into the events log - it would seem that Dell Quickset is crashing more often than it ever used to.

 

Another victim of the A07 BIOS here -- bricked my system. Please skip this one folks.

 

We're you able to recover it?

 

A08 BIOS is out.

- Add DBAR Feature in Boot Menu

 

DBAR ?

 

Dell Backup and Recovery

 

Oh thanks. I have one inbound ( high end). I'm hoping it won't have some of the issues I read about here

 

I updated to Windows 10 and noticed immediately that there is graphic/input lag that is reproducible. For instance, you click the start menu button and it will load halfway, then freeze for a split second, then continue loading. This happened at a lot of other places, usually the result of a mouse click followed by a screen refresh of some sort.

I made sure drivers were up to date.

I have to install Cisco Anyconnect for work which seemed to not work correctly with Windows 10 networking. Wireless network connectivity suffered due to the Cisco wanting to control everything (annoying software). It wouldn't reconnect to known networks properly. Then Virtualbox didn't work at all.

So, I reverted back to windows 8.1, which is an option from within Windows 10 and will try it again some time in the future.

Also ran into some small bugs, like the taskbar configuration, size, toolbars, wouldn't persist between reboots. Oh wells for now. I couldn't give it a fair chance since my networking software didn't work right. I'll try it again later.

 

If you disable the Nvidia card most of the freezing will be gone.

 

Nope. Bricked. Dell is replacing the m/b tomorrow.

 

Well, I (eventually) updated my bios to A08 tonight.
What a complete nightmare !

I downloaded the executable, then restarted the pc so it could do the update (fresh).
I ran the executable.
Halfway through, the fans kicked in to high gear, then slowed down quickly, then back up to high gear - and stayed on high.
The progress bar for the bios upgrade froze at 90%.
The screen, trackpad, everything was completely frozen.
I gave it 10 minutes to see if it would complete. Nope.
I tried holding down the power button to turn it off. Nope. Power button did nothing.
SO, here I have a frozen laptop, with the fans screaming at their highest speed and NO way to stop it !!!
NICE !!!

My only recourse was to get my tools, take the back off this craptop, and pry off the battery connector to kill the power.
That part was successful. Ahhh, the silence was good to hear.
So, I plugged the connector back in, and booted it up.
I checked the bios version (in the dell support app) and it said it was at a08.
I knew it froze at 90%, so I decided to try the bios update again.

This time, (once again), the fans came on at full speed, and it (looked) like it was going to freeze up on me again - but it seemed to recover itself this time - and it ended up completing the bios upgrade.

It is now (fully) at a08, but I kept thinking how would a normal user have dealt with this - since taking the back off this thing to disconnect the battery is not an activity that every user out there would feel comfortable to perform.

For what I paid for this laptop, it has not lived up to my expectations. It has given me more issues than much cheaper products I have owned in the past.
Lately I don't know what has come over the silly machine, as it has decided to act up on its own - without me having made (any) changes to it whatsoever.
I am not impressed.

By the way, the most recent erratic behavior this thing has started to exhibit can be characterized as follows:
When watching a video, browsing, or just clicking around on the desktop - the fans will go into high speed for about 1 second, then down to minimum for 1 second, then back up to high speed for about 7 seconds - after which it goes back to normal again. Sometimes at the end of that behavior I get a systray popup saying that the display driver crashed and windows was able to recover it. Sometimes there is no such popup - but when I go into the event log it seems that Dell Quickset crashed.
Who knows what's going on here.
Did Dell push an update that is causing all this ?
Did a recent (2 weeks ago) Microsoft update cause this ?
All I know is that things were working fine before - and even though I have changed (nothing), there is a lot of buggy behavior going on.
I no longer trust this pc to do anything important - it has become THAT unreliable lately.
Sad and shameful excuse for a high end laptop.

 

I updated BIOS to A08 without any issue, when I bought my XPS, it had A03, every updated was performed without problem A04, A05, A06, A07 and now A08.

Someone knows where is DBAR menu introduced with A08 BIOS?

 

Would really appreciate some help with the following. Uninstalled Atheros Network Killer Manager from my XPS 15 L521X (windows 8) and it removed the 'Network Controller' drivers as well!! So now I can't access the internet.

Using my desktop PC I tried downloading the network driver package (GFKC_WN_16.8.0_A04) but it won't let me install the software (just says 'The software package cannot be installed on your system'). I cannot locate the CD/DVD that came with my laptop to try reinstalling the drivers from there.

Can someone please help me resolve this issue. I have tried following this link but unclear which chip drivers I need for my laptop ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/killer-network-manager.718101/)

Thanks in advance.

 

Well sounds like a no for me for now. I do hear a new version of windows 10 is coming out this week, so maybe it will be better.

Thanks for sharing!

 

Any noticeable changes in the latest BIOS? The change log seems pretty unexciting.

 

Just updated to A08. Haven't noticed any change.

 

Please keep in mind that this thread is for the XPS 15 9530, not the L521X, and not for general Windows support issues. It's already pretty long, so if this doesn't resolve your issue, then please try looking elsewhere for assistance -- I believe there's an L521X Owner's Lounge thread too.

That said, when I go to support.dell.com and select the L521X, then select Windows 8 (not 8.1), under the Network tab I see this link for your Killer WiFi + Bluetooth: http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER02308311M/1/Network_Driver_MTW94_WN_10.0.0.287_A04.EXE.

And when I select 8.1, I see this link: http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER01774791M/1/Network_Driver_G5T5W_WN_1.0.30.1052_A00.EXE.

No idea where you found the one you have, but judging by the 16.8.0 version in the file name, it's probably an Intel WiFi driver, which would definitely explain why it won't install.

 

I just upgraded to A08 and it locked up about 9% in. The computer finally shut itself off after 30min. and is now dead. On hold with tech support now. Any hope of a fix without a new computer?

 

I updated to A08 Bios yesterday, my laptop also froze at shutdown, but I think this was due to the system trying to apply a Windows Update on Restart.
I had to manually shutdown by pressing the power button. On wake up the system was updated to A08 but I re-flash it just to be safe. Everything went smoothly the second time.

The good news, after updating to the A08 in combination with installing the latest Intel GPU drivers fixed my Audio corruption/CPU Max-out issue.
I had to watch some long videos yesterday both streaming and local files, including a 40 minutes long and I had absolutely no sign of Sound corruption or CPU Maxout in random phases.

 

Mine is completely dead. Light on the power button is on but it is unresponsive. They are going to send a tech after I complained about them wanting me to wait 7-10 days for shipping it in. This might be something that just picked now to die and has nothing to do with the update.

 

As I mentioned before, I had the problem with the BIOS update freezing at 90% but was able to get it unstuck by plugging and unplugging an USB pen drive. Just plug it, wait a few seconds so it can be detected and unplug it. This worked for me in the past.

 

By pen drive do you mean a usb flash drive? Or something else?

 

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know what happens if the BIOS bricks our computer with expired warranty?

 

If your computer bricks and your warranty is expired, I guess most likely you will have to buy a new motherboard...

 

I'm also still having the garbled audio problem. Maybe you could check out my post here (http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/xps-15-haswell-owners-lounge.735403/page-333#post-9836269) and listen to my audio recording of the noise and the soundcloud link that always reproduces the garbled audio.

 

USB flash drive

 

Thanks.

 

Interesting.
The audio "glitches" I get do not sound like what you are experiencing.
Mine are more like an electrical "bzzzt" kind of sound - (although more of an "electronic" sound).
Mine sounds like the kind of garbling you'd hear on a bad cellphone call.
The audio anomalies I hear do not occur on specific media, but (all) media, be it audio from a video, sound clip, windows events sounds, sounds from websites, etc.
I have decided to just learn to live with it - considering that others also have similar issues.
I am just disappointed that we have to live with such flaws on such an expensive laptop.

 

I had the buzzing, too. Solved it by uninstalling SupportAssist and SupportAssistAgent. Hopefully this will work for you, too.

 

i dont understand one thing on notebookcheck the contrast of dell xps 15 was written like 1:1600 and for macbook like 1:1000.obviously everybody was saying that the dell xps 15 has very deep blacks and great contrast.but now i feel that it does not have that good a contrast.blacks are not that black.my brother just bought a macbook 13 inch retina and the black difference is obvious.the macbook has much better contrast.further i recently bought a samsung galaxy tab S 10.5 which has a super amoled display and it has very good contrasts because amoled displays have no backlights so blacks are true blacks.now i seee a huge difference in contrasts...using them side by side.soo was that notebookcheck 1:1600 contrast value written for dell xps a lie?

 

I have a small bright spot on my xps 15 9530. It is visible when the screen shows white. It is not a stuck pixel since it is not there when showing black. Today is the last day of my warranty. I called it in for depot repair. I hope they will really just change the screen as I have no coil whine. What are your experiences with depot repair? Will they do a factory restore on my 512GB SSD (did full image today just in case)