XPS 15 (Haswell) Owner's Lounge

Hi, I'm interested in forcing the update by using the ISO download however I am unsure of how to go about 'clean installing' the OS after the upgrade. My PC has the 2 original factory partitions (C: & recovery). How do I go about formatting & reinstalling the OS and drivers as cleanly as possible? (ie. Using the settings in windows 8.1, Dell backup, any other option)

 

I use Linux (Ubuntu) as my main OS. Some other people use Arch. You can find more info in the wiki: http://xps-15.wikia.com/wiki/Linux.

On a separate note, yesterday I had my motherboard replaced (again). No coil whine yay (for the time being).

 

Thanks, I know about this wiki page but it seems to be a little outdated?
Bumblee seems to work better with optimus these days?
How about Touchegg for touchscreen ? Will the touchscreen still be half broken ?
Battery life still worse on linux?

But mainly I was hoping for infos on arch linux since it is a completely different approach than ubuntu ?

 

Yeah, it's kind of outdated.

• Bumblebee works fine, albeit you still have to run it from the command-line, as you always had. There is now official optimus support from nVidia, but IMO it's worse, as it requires you to log out and log in again.
• About Touchegg, it's the first time I hear about it. The touchscreen works more like a mouse than what you would expect from a touchscreen (i.e. no pinch to zoom or drag to scroll, at least not in Firefox; I think this does work in Chrome, but I switched to Firefox long ago since Chrome only got HiDPI support in Linux a couple of months ago). If you find out anything interesting about Touchegg and particularly for the XPS 15, I'd love to hear.
• Battery life, YMMV, but I'd say it is worse in Linux than it is in Windows, even with the powertop tweaks. Has anyone played lately with it?

 

Meh sounds really bad and buggy.. especially for a 1-2 year old laptop :/ I really want to make the switch to linux (for privacy reasons) but it sounds to me all too buggy.

 

when you clean install it will give 2 options, upgrade and advanced, under advanced you click and delete every partition, once they are all gone simply click next and it will partition and install.

Use the ISO and burn it with RUFUS 2.2 onto USB using the GPT options, you can get more help by searching google for "windows 10 and rufus."

 

omfg Dell released windows 10 drivers!

 

Thanks. Does this mean that the partition is all done automatically (allocation and so on). Ever since the switch to the UEFI license system (inbuilt license) I've been a bit weary with clean formats. With regards to RUFUS I'll have a look into it. Hopefully it works out better than the Dell Backup & Recovery USB key I set up which got me into all sorts of problems this one time.

 

Be careful with these. The audio drivers wrecked havoc on my system and so did the freefall ST driver. It seems that Dell drivers are coming through Windows Update (on my system at least) and the ones on the Dell site might be superfluous.

 

I had to uninstall realtek audio driver because the speakers and the headphones did not work properly after the upgrade. Also two finger tap right click stopped as well.

 

Hi i have upgraded to Windows 10 and I have lost Waves MaxxAudio Pro. I now have MaxxAudio 3 which has no settings like the PRO.

Anyone knows how I can download Waves MaxxAudio Pro?

 

Lost MaxxAudio Pro. Only got MaxxAudio 3. Everything else works flawlessly

 

Me too! Since the update listening to music or playing games with my headphones is totally subpar. Friends also have informed me that the mic capture is worse. Anyone know of a fix?

 

Update: Drivers all need updating from Dell's website Obviously kind of pointless atm since I will probably be clean installing this weekend

 

I did a clean install and the audio works fine with realtek driver. that's odd. Hah

 

Yes it will setup partitions, recovery etc, Rufus is piss easy, select the ISO using the ISO button then change it to GPT at the top as this laptop supports secure boot.

They are almost the same, the intel 7260 driver is newer on the dell site going from v17 to v18.

Avoid intels RST suite if you have a hard drive supporting hardware based encryption on the pro version of windows 10 as it breaks it again, thanks intel, you had fixed that on windows 8 and now fubar my install causing a reinstall after my drive became unbootable!

always been the case and no way back, makes no difference to me as I have the settings I needed, ie turn enhancements off as they are ****.

 

I don't get any notification through the Dell Update tool. Do we need to manually install them?

 

go to the download page and see.

 

The Dell update tool in theory should check the installed drivers, and communicate with the servers for any outdated ones to update. Logically that is the way I think it should work. Unfortunately it does not work out too well so yeah we have to use the Downloads page from Dell.

If Windows automatically installs most of them now, is there an easier way of double checking that you've got the drivers updated (traditionally using Device manager) and not require the ones found on the Dell Downloads & Drivers page?

 

After win10 install all seems to be working but device manager lists 2 unknown devices now.
How am I supposed to know what it does not recognize ?
Also, the audio seems to now be plain old windows as it does not seem to be using the special Dell app to enhance it anymore.
I will have to check the Dell updates to see if anything is available.
Oh and by the way the new Microsoft Edge browser is terrible. It is a severely neutered browser. I am glad IE 11 is still there and I can always use Chrome and Firefox.

Sent from my LG-H812 using Tapatalk

 

Just one last question with regards the partition/clean install. From what I've read windows only deals with the UEFI partitions and when reinstalling these will form automatically.

What of the Dell recovery partition apart from the other (relatively smaller) UEFI partitions? I've created the bootable USB using Rufus and will try and clean install the OS. Does it pose a potential risk later on if deleted? I can't get my head around this one.

 

All of that happened to me. I uninstalled the Realtek drivers via control panel. I did 2 reboots, and the Dell drivers magically appeared already installed, which is why I assumed Windows Update downloaded them. If that doesn't work for you try the ones Dell just posted on the site for Win10. If they don't work, try the Win 8.1 ones.

 

no, seriously dump the drive and start fresh, you no l0nger have a need for a 2 year old windows 8.1 recovery partition.

 

it doesn't pull the IME driver so start with that, then the chipset. if it still has an unknown remove it and re-detect, if it comes back post the hardware id, the pci/vend type id

 

Is there any way to download Maxxaudio Pro?
I did some test and the sound without Maxxaudio Pro is very poor.

 

I tried pulling it from the recovery partition without success and gave up.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

 

Most of the drivers seem up to date from windows (in fact some are even newer than the one's dell lists as new). My synaptics touchpad driver was newer.

I just noticed Dell released a driver pack for Windows 10, but I am hesitant to use this as I don't know if it will let me pick and choose the drivers.

 

Straub1928 - can you please post a link to that Windows 10 (driver pack) you refer to ?
I am getting very erratic behavior on my machine, and so far one BSOD - (choking on dxmms2.sys).
Also not getting the pc to sleep, wake, or restart (consistently).
Also, upon returning from sleep, Windows will sometimes randomly choose to close one of my open apps/windows for no apparent reason !!

 

It's from Dell's Support site http://www.dell.com/support/home/us...ml12/drivers/advanced?appindex=dellspct&s=dhs :

Go to Systems Management (1 file)
Dell Command | Deploy Driver Pack for XPS 9530 Win 10


What bios are you running? I haven't updated my bois yet.

 

For me the major issue I have with Windows 10 is audio related. First Maxxaudio 3 with the drivers from Dell's site seems vastly inferior to the Pro version, but more annoyingly I lost my audio over HDMI to my TV. Although I am updated to the latest Intel driver and Intel Display Audio has no issues it seems, and my TV is set to default playback device etc.... It just does not want to play the sound over HDMI. I tried all the solutions people with these issues were doing to no avail. Hopefully it would get fixed in a future driver update. That't the only thing really pissing me off.

 

Try uninstalling the audio drivers you installed from Dell site and then running Windows Update. On my M3800 (XPS 15 twin), this updated the Dell audio drivers to the proper version after experiencing the same problem.

 

Format the drive and install a fresh copy to iron out the bugs.

 

Thanks for your reply but I already tried all that to no avail. I guess I'll wait for future driver updates. It should work someday. Right now I am outputting from the audio jack to the receiver as a temp solution.

 

Add myself to the list of people with audio issues. For me, the Maxxaudio enhancements just break the quality (really bad), and the microphones are working at a really low volume (both the built-in one and externals from the jack, the volume and the gain are set to max in the properties).

On a different topic, I also have a small bug that really bugs me (eheh). The mouse pointer size: the combination of small-white does not work, and it remains the size of medium, adding some jagged-borders quality to it. Small-black works fine, all the other combinations too. The thing is, medium or large are quite too much for my likings, and the black pointer is horrible. Anyone experiencing the same?

 

Posting from my phone. I'm in the process of clean installing and I've run into 2 issues. Firstly, the scaling in the windows setup is awful and everything is tiny! Secondly, for some reason I can't delete all the partitions. In the end I've had to format the primary partition(460GB) and 2 unallocated disk space (11GB & 15GB). The latter won't let me delete them.

Any tips?

 

I'm getting a few freezes and blank screens on Win10. Screen will just randomly go blank, and the system is frozen (caps lock doesn't respond). I need to force a reboot, and then when I check event viewer, a 0x116 BSOD had occurred. This is usually graphics driver. I'm assuming it's the Intel one, since it's just happened on the desktop, so it shouldn't be on NVidia. I had the Dell ones on there, but I switched to the Intel ones, but I'm still getting problems. Anyone else having issues, or have a solution?

 

Eyl, join the club, my friend.
I have been having many random issues with windows 10 also.
The worst is where (out of the blue), the fans will go full speed on/off about 3 times or so - all while freezing the pc - only to stop and then go back to normal. The last time this happened it was video driver related (NVidia, actually - which was surprising, as I was only browsing the internet with no video at the time.) Also, this behavior in the past, had preceded a motherboard failure - so I am expecting that to happen in the near future also.
(Oh joy).

Weirder than that is the erratic behavior of sleep/wake, how when coming back from sleep, it will sometimes close an open app (right before your eyes).
Also, open up the normal control panel (right click on the start button and select control panel).
Leave that running for a while, (10 min or so), then come back. For me, that one control panel window had become 3 windows - as if someone had opened it two more times.

Also, I get random "notifications" that come/disappear quickly - telling me to enable my virus protection (I am just using windows defender).

Lastly, I had previously posted that after my upgrade, there were two instances of unknown devices in device manager.
Well, I reverted (Back) to win 8.1, nd then re-installed the upgrade to win10, and those two listings for unknown devices magically disappeared.
SO, it is obvious that microsoft's upgrade program has some serious bugs in it.

Just as an aside, I upgraded a desktop pc from win7 to win10 today.
Lets just say that it did not go smoothly. Upon completion, it would not open up the settings, nor would it let you open up Display Settings, or Personalize.
Googling this issue led me to a Microsoft post, which contained a "fix it" program - which thankfully fixed (that) issue - but on that pc I am getting random Blue Screens on the video driver (NVidia again).

Sigh. Life on the bleeding edge !

 

you only should use the upgrade to activate 10 on the system, then make sure you have backed up what you need (mainly the c:\users folder is enough) then clean install (the same hardware ID is generated like a file checksum so it will activate within minutes of going online again). Those on the insider program all commented that the event viewer had thousands of errors after a few days that turned into tens of entries after a clean install.

This ain't no apple product where is works on 4 hardware designs, it has to upgrade millions of different hardware configurations so it tried it's best and failed as always.

 

get close to the screen, your stuffed as the setup doesn't scale as it is a simple boot environment.

I suggest using fdisk to try and shift those partitions then use disk management to expend the partition to fill the gap.

if all else fails you get get a usb bootable hirens boot disk, I think you need the "recovered" version containing a bootable windows 7 environment (you have to use the alternate boot method or it will BOSD) this should allow the partitions to be deleted.

 

I don't need to do an upgrade, I've done a clean install using my MSDN key.

And this isn't "thousands of errors", this is one particular error relating to the failure of the graphics driver, resulting in a BSOD (which can't be seen as the graphics driver has stopped).

 

Tempted to get one of these, but with MS showing an infinity display Dell XPS 15, I'm curious as to when this might be released.
If it's a refreshed model with a broadwell or skylake mobile cpu in it, and a newer GPU like a 950m or 960m, would definitely be good.

 

https://twitter.com/Dell/status/626102823764271104

 

Bios A09
Fixes
- Fixed System hang up after Touch Touchpad
- Fixed USB Test Fail

Enhancements
-Update Flash Utility
-Update SMBIOS type0 format for Win10 BIOS Requirement

survived it.

 

I have successfully update BIOS to A09

All drivers for Windows 10 are available on Dell website, just remember to select Windows 10 for OS:

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/555/product-support/product/xps-15-9530/drivers/advanced

Just for example this is the link for Windows 10 Dell Touchpad Driver:
http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER03142623M/1/9530_Input_Driver_P818C_WN32_19.0.9.4_A00.EXE

and this is the link for Realtek High Definition Audio ALC3661 Driver
http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER03153965M/1/9530_Audio_Driver_2WNJ3_WN32_6.0.1.7525_A00.EXE

If someone is already using Windows 10 may check if MaxxAudio Pro is included in Realtek audio driver, 300MB just for audio driver seem like a lot.
If Maxxaudio Pro is not included in Realtek Audio driver then the only chance for us to have it even on Windows 10 is that someone, that will receive an XPS9530 born with Windows 10, shares the recovery image.

 

My a09 update bricked my machine.
I just knew this would happen.
This is replacement number 5 and now this !
The update utility was running fine but then the fans started to go wild and then I got a blue screen saying something about the video.
The fans kicked into high speed and then the pc tried to reboot but never did.
The pc was dead but the fans were going full speed.
The only way I could stop them was to open it up and disconnect the battery.
After reconnecting it the pc will not turn on no matter what.
Tomorrow I call Dell. Again. I know they have no motherboards in stock so this means yet another new system exchange.
That will bring me to the 6th unit !
Why can't I just get one that WORKS already ?!
These things are so finicky and fragile it is a joke.
Sigh.
Now I am yet again without a laptop for a few weeks.

Sent from my LG-H812 using Tapatalk

 

I would use the drivers from windows update for the touchpad as they are newer 19.0.15.2 and dell branded.
Congrats on the update working

You have no luck, I remember seeing all the bricking posts so I avoided a08 as it had no real fixes, When I was ready to install this I closed everything including the anti virus to give me a better chance. I nearly didn't do it to avoid being without a machine when on holiday but took the gamble.

 

It has Maxxaudio 3 and not Pro for some reason. I find it kind of sucks compared to Pro. I turned off all enhancements.

 

I find any enhancements cause distortion anyway, especially with the default windows sounds. Can't remember what the pro was like but I can't see the software making it much better than 3. It is still a pair of crap speakers regardless.

 

anyone else have mic issues on the official window 10 drivers from dell?

 

Sorry, I'm still on Windows 8.1, so I can't answer to your question.

If you are using XPS 15 speakers then Maxxaudio Pro is almost essential, anyone is still on Windows 8.1 can do some test enabling and disabling Maxxsense to hear the big difference.

Question for people on Windows 10: is it possible to use the old driver for Windows 8.1 for Realtek High Definition Audio ALC3661 on Windows 10?
This driver is bigger the Windows 10 version (430MB vs 300MB), I guess it includes Maxxaudio Pro, maybe it still works even on Windows 10.

http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER01804488M/2/9530_Audio_Driver_H4TDV_WN_6.0.1.7054_A01.EXE