XPS 15 (Haswell) Owner's Lounge

I had the same, I found using the cable that came with my phone fixed the problem. Maybe USB3 allows faster charging messing up the signal, thats all I could come up with.

Does the single USB2 port work ok ?

 

first issue is laptop will not induce sleep after a few days without rebooting.

2nd issue is topaz lens effect not working.

i have tried to boot into USB but failing.
- disabled secure boot
- enabled legacy rom

i don't know which file to choose to boot (bootmgr.efi is my original thought but it does not boot into install environment. is it possible it won't allow 2 installations of windows 8.1 64 bit?)

 

I've had similar problems with an USB 2.0 external hard drive. You could try a different USB plug, such as the 2.0 one, or maybe a different cable as suggested by GoNz0.

In my case, I got a new hard drive enclosure (USB 3.0), which completely fixed the issue.

 

Hi, anyone successfully update bios from DOS?

I tried MS-DOS and FreeDOS, but everytime i get "this program cannot be run in DOS mode". Also tried WinPE, but without success too.

 

Can it be done at all? My understanding is that the BIOS update program is a Windows-only one. No DOS, no Linux support.

 

At least on my previous notebook (latitude 6510) i successfully updated bios using usb key with DOS.

 

Posted before on this...

 

Ok can somebody confirm to me whether your fan is also on during normal browsing (with power plugged in)?

Also what's the best way to monitor temps on this laptop?

 

USB 3.0 allows 4x as much current as USB 2.0 (2A vs 500mA), which is why devices can charge so much faster or devices with higher power requirements can now be bus-powered. However, I noticed that my PS3 controllers SEEMED to complete their charging faster, but would also then die a lot faster, so maybe their circuitry doesn't handle fast charging very well. Maybe something like that is going on here. My iPhone seems to handle it just fine though, but then again the AC adapter that Apple sells is 1A, so they were clearly designed to handle more than the USB spec anyway.

Using the USB 2.0 port might not solve the problem either since some USB 2.0 ports were designed to provide USB 3.0 levels of current. Apple started doing that on their systems when they released the iPad (which requires 2A to charge rather than simply maintain charge level), and some other manufacturers followed suit. And I think I remember testing an iPad on this system's USB 2.0 port and seeing it actually charge.

No idea what topaz lens effect is, but did you follow the guide on the XPS 15 Wiki for creating boot media? Did you also read the article I put up there about how to solve inability to boot from USB? When done correctly you don't need to manually specify a boot file.

I think you're stuck. Dell usually does provide Linux updaters, but maybe not for systems that they don't sell or support on Linux. DOS worked on older systems but it seems not to anymore. Got a spare hard drive you can throw a copy of Windows 7 onto? I mention Windows 7 specifically because it's the only version that always allowed you to install it without entering a product key. XP didn't allow that until SP3 and even then only if it was specified as volume license media. Then again, 8.1 could work too given that you presumably have an 8.1 key embedded into your system.

 

Seems you are right. Will try to make Win8 installation on usb flash using PWBoot.

 

WARNING: A03 bios may be unstable!​

At the moment I use this laptop constantly for 16h/day. I spend days on the problem of crashing inkscape under my linux. Tried so many compilations of kernels and other inkscape, libs and everything. But always after some hours I got a complete kernel system freeze!!
As experienced linux users know, a complete freeze is rare and 99% hint to hardware problems, I still had my linux install and packages in mind.

Since days I tried everything to fix the problem. Freezes occurred after hour again. Then today I was so p*** off that I completely wiped everything. Set-up my linux install completly new. No migration of home or anything.
Freezes again after ours pushing Inkscape to RAM consumptions of some Gigabytes and heavy loads for the CPU.

Then I remembered, an came to the point, that all my problems began with the day also installing the A03 bios (under Win7). Today about 4 hours ago I reverted back to the A02 bios (cry no batt management). Until now, I had no system freeze.

So people: If there is anybody out there (power-user, muuuuch RAM and muuch CPU on playing or working, win or linux) who experienced also unexplainable issues/freezes since the A03 bios. Please post!
Since the ACPI information and address conflicts are still buggy in the A03 bios it may be also a problem where linux can be more sensitive. But I had had a stable system before A03 bios, and now back on A02 again stable.

p.s.
If I will get any freeze again since downgrading to A02, I will update this post!
---my old posts with some information about PSU (page 360) and somewhere the thing's I tried with intel XTU--
http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/735403-xps-15-haswell-owners-lounge-360.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/735403-xps-15-haswell-owners-lounge-455.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/735403-xps-15-haswell-owners-lounge-289.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...3-xps-15-haswell-owners-lounge-294-print.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...3-xps-15-haswell-owners-lounge-266-print.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/735403-xps-15-haswell-owners-lounge-455.html[/QUOTE]

 

No problems for me so far on Windows 8.1 x64. I constantly have 8GB+ RAM usage and on top of that do photo/video editing or play games/what so ever. Sometimes I also run virtual machines with 6+GB RAM dedicated.

No freezing so far.

 

Can anyone else help me on my wifi problem?
Also, is it possible to loose charge while the laptop is off? It seems like my laptop is doing just that.

 

Ok, I am thoroughly confused now.

Did a few tricks that I mentioned before to get my computer to recognize my samsung phone (galaxy note 2, rooted), but now it won't recognize my samsung tablet (galaxy note 10.1 2014, rooted).

I'm at a complete loss here. Both show up in the device manager when connected, but only the phone (galaxy note 2) shows up in "my computer".

Has anyone figured the USB issue? It's definitely related to the connect/re-connect problem. I'm inclined to think this is a driver problem since I was able to get my phone to work and my tablet did work perfectly fine until I rooted it. Don't know what the deal is here...

And while I'm thinking about it... is there a way to control the power output of the USBs? Or at least know if they're putting out .5A or 2A?

 

This is mentioned on the XPS 15 Wiki, but try disabling Intel Smart Connect and Intel Rapid Start. Also make sure wake timers are disabled in your Power Options. A few other people have noticed this, and it seems to be that one or more of those things is causing their system to spontaneously wake up and then go back to sleep.

You're inclined to think your problem is related to a disconnect/reconnect issue because it started after you made a software change on your phone? I don't follow your logic there.... Sounds to me like rooting your tablet caused it to no longer present itself as a mass storage device, which is why it no longer appears in My Computer. Either that or the mass storage file system it's presenting isn't one that Windows reads, like a typical Linux file system. If it's the former, I believe Android has a way to manage what function(s) the device presents to its host when connected via USB though, like "Charge Only", "Disk Mode", etc. If it's the latter, opening Computer Management > Disk Management should reveal your tablet listed in the lower half of the main window with at least one partition of an unknown format, which is why it's not actually mounting. If that's the case, I'm not sure what to do.

As for the power output, I don't know of a way to monitor it. Limiting it would require hacking the USB controller driver, but as far as controlling it goes, I believe the connected device gets to draw the amount of power it wants, up to the maximum the host will supply; the host system can't "force feed" a device extra power.

 

Others have said that they had hair or an eyelash under the monitor and I laughed and then when I got mine, there was a small piece of lint or something under the monitor. I asked for an exchange and hopefully it won't have any debris. It's amazing that this happens. Where are they putting these laptops together? Outside?

I got the coil whine but it's not too disturbing for me. It doesn't always happen and it's way quieter than my old XPS 15 (1502x) with an on-off-on-off fan and hard drive.

 

The reason I say it's the connect/reconnect issue is because that was the original problem I intended to fix. Everything that has happened so far is a result of my efforts to fix the connect/reconnect issue, thus, I'm hoping/thinking that if that is fixed, I can undo everything I've done and things will be ok. What I've done so far is just a bandaid (ie an imperfect solution that is not consistent).

As far as the power goes for the USB, the reason I ask is because when I plug it into my tablet, I get an 'X' over the battery indicator, indicating that it's not charging. Considering that the stock charger puts out 2A and these USB ports are supposed to put out 2A, makes me wonder what they're outputting at a given point.

 

it could give 20 amps and still show a red x as the data pins do not have the resistor fitted that you get in samsung chargers to say "I am a samsung high power charger" It may well be charging at 2A but the X will still show.

 

That's a good point, although if I do end up getting the Sager, it would only be for the color changing keyboard lol

 

I'm actually keeping this one, I think, simply because i'm going abroad soon and I don't want to risk getting sth even worse (like stuck pixels). The lint/dust is barely noticable actually. 3-4 bad pixels kinda mee off, though. Only one is kinda noticable, though, and not a big issue. But I'm seriously disgusted with Dell. This is my third display...all with defects. This is bloody ridiculous.

 

With a modded inf it is possible to install the latest win7 intel usb 3 on win 8.1. I just did that and am going to check whether that will let me use the att beam.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

 

can someone help pls

so im tryna take off the wifi card, anyone have any tips on how to? I opened the laptop up and saw that theres a screw and some wires. some help pls
and where do they sell these TX5 screwdrivers ?

 

For Ubuntu/Mint users, the nightly version of Cinnamon has the enhanced HiDPI support included out of the box (no more tweaks required).

 

Here's something interesting: when I have the laptop closed (working on external monitor) and I play a game a bit, turning the fan up, after turning the game off, the fan just won't stop spinning at max capacity until I open the laptop (turn on the in-built display). Any ideas?

 

The area between the screen hinge and the base, there are vents for air to pass out of the machine. If you have a look there, you can see the grills. The reason the fans are spinning at max while the lid is closed is because they are trying to push the air out and when you open the lid, the fans will gradually slow down because the hot air now has somewhere to escape from.

 

Does anyone else notice how the sound from the speakers at the bottom of the laptop seems to only come out from one side? Or is that only me?

 

Thanks, that makes sense.

On another note - has anybody noticed any improvement in coil whine after bios update to A03? I've read some opinions claiming it reduced / eliminated the coil whine. Not for me, alas.

 

Has anyone found a way to sort the chrome fonts out yet?

Everything else about Chrome I love, but the fonts give me a headache after a while.

Tried switching to IE, but whilst the fonts were gorgeous, I found having an extra bar at the top of the screen really impacted on the amount of a webpage you get to see, and the scrolling was horrible when using the touchpad.

 

Do you mean that Chrome doesn't render text at the native resolution? You can fix that by doing the following:
1) Go to chrome://flags/ and enable HiDPI support.
2) Right click Chrome's shortcut and go to compatibility and tick the "disable display scaling on high DPI settings".

Enjoy

 

Only you. I can clearly notice stereo sound coming from both sides of the bottom grill.

 

one speakers offset to allow the HDD room.

 

Go to support.dell.com, select your system, and download the Owner's Manual. It has instructions for installing and removing every component. If you don't already have a Torx T5 screwdriver I'm not really sure how you got your laptop open (at least without stripping the screw heads...), but just buy this and you'll never have to worry about not having the right bit for working on consumer electronics again: 54 Bit Driver Kit - iFixit. If you're not familiar with iFixIt, they're awesome. Or if you just want a Torx T5 driver, try your local hardware store, or somewhere like Ace Hardware or maybe even Sears.

And please for the sake of our continued civilization and society, don't every use the non-word "tryna" again. I died a little inside reading that.

I saw that on a different Dell system and it turned out to be because the tiny speaker connector was seated just slightly incorrectly on the motherboard. Disconnecting and reconnecting it solved the issue. The easiest test for me to confirm the problem (and successful fix) was to go to Control Panel > Sounds, select the built-in speakers, and run the Test chime you have in the tab that allows you to set the sampling frequency and bit rate. That should very clearly play the same sound at the same volume from two very obviously different sides of the machine. On that other system, before the fix the left channel sounded fine, but the right channel was weak and sounded like it was partly coming from the left channel.

No change. You still get some coil whine when the system is plugged in and not charging, regardless of whether it's at 100% and not charging or some other level and not charging because of custom battery configurations (which now work).

Chrome still isn't completely fixed, even with the config file hack applied. Try Firefox in the meantime.

 

Does anyone else notice extreme lag when using firefox? Even things like facebook chat lag at times. Even worse, sometimes the browser stops responding for ~10 sec at a time...I'm not sure if it has something to do with flash or some sort of plugin. Seems weird for such a powerful machine

 

I've recently started seeing that on another system I have (which I use more often anyway since it's my work system), so I'm betting it's either Flash or Firefox. It's hugely irritating, but I haven't had time to investigate root cause.

 

Interesting. You mean Intel(R)_USB_3.0_eXtensible_Host_Controller_Driver? That may be useful for me. I have a USB wireless adapter that works fine up to W8, but is useless in W8.1. What did you do, edit mup.xml? Can you post the modifications you made that allow the W7 drivers to install?

 

The WiFi problem is still strange. Works well on the other side of the building but really slowish in my room/right outside my room. Works well mostly all over campus. I am graduating and leaving in just over a month. Should I be worried about this? Try to get a replacement?
Is there a way to test this sort of thing?

 

I do, when scrolling with feedly, which causes very laggy scroll and low-pitched CPU/GPU noise.

Most if not all other websites are fine. I wonder what is different in that one.

 

I didn't notice anything. Using Ubuntu Trusty. Sometimes I put the cores to do some custom processing based on OpenCV, for many hours. No crash whatsoever.

Maybe I am not hitting "the" button? Or maybe your flash of A03 was not correct? (unlikely, but you may want to give it another try, just in case).

No change in my side, other than the battery options.

 

As I wrote, still had no problems after downgrading from the A03 to the A02 bios.
But thank you for the idea: You could be right with the idea of a second flashing! It had been strange, that the first time I flashed the A03 bios, even the first boot afterwards the fans continued to be on full power (THAT full power one just have when flashing).

Therfore maybe something had been wrong. Now I reflashed from A02 to A03 and the fans behaved also at the first boot afterwards normally. So I will report, if I get again unstability with the A03 bios. ...... but I guess you COULD be right, that the flash was not good and therefore maybe some internal settings (no one knows, what all chipset settings dell hides from us) was faulty. ... let's see!

 

I wouldn't worry about it. Even if you did call Dell, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't replace your WiFi card just because you have a bad signal in one specific area. As for testing, you could watch your signal strength with something like InSSIDer as you walked around to see whether it drops off a cliff in your room. If it does, then it's probably just something involving the design of the 7260AC and/or its drivers that causes it not to perform well in an area where other clients might work fine. But it definitely doesn't suggest a problem with your specific unit IMHO.

 

To be honest, I'd be surprised, as the flashing tool is supposed to check if the flashing has happened correctly. But well, strangest things have been seen...

 

That's actually the solution I've just found!

However now the kerning on some fonts Chrome displays is buggered and it's giving me a headache.

 

Hello,

I am experiencing an issue with my USB when connecting my phone (Nexus 4 or Galaxy Nexus) to my USB port on my computer. The connection automatically disconnects and reconnects itself repeatedly. I have tried all USB ports, different USB cables to no avail. The same equipment (USB cable and phone) works with no issue on a different computer (running windows 7). Its just XPS 9530 that has the issue.

I read online, people are having similar problems on different brands of laptops that are running 8.1, they claim that it is a power management issue which they detail how to fix. I followed the instructions and it did not work.
USB device keeps disconnecting/connecting after upgrading to - Microsoft Community

Is anyone experiencing similar issues?

thank you

 

I've even just downloaded safari to see how that manages it, and it's just as bad as chrome was before!

 

Man, stick to IE or FF if everything else gives you a headache!

 

IE is prettier, but I don't like that you lose a layer of screen if you want your bookmarks always visible.

Not tried FF yet, but last time I did it was so much slower than chrome.

 

Is there any way to completely disable the wake up when the lid is close?

Today I charged the laptop and then drove ~1 hour in the car with my laptop in my laptop bag. When I then booted up (or did it only wake up? i dont know) the battery was at only 23%. So it seems like the laptop was running in my laptop bag during a 1 hour drive (sports car = very bumpy). I have the top tier version (so no HDD) but still I am worried. I believed i shut down the laptop but who knows what I did as I was in hurry.

Thanks

 

I did but using the 2amp capable cable that came with my phone fixed the issue.

 

Make sure you've investigated all of the possibilities mentioned on the appropriate XPS 15 Wiki page, which I've just now expanded: Windows Wakes Up Without Permission - XPS 15 Wiki

 

Ok so I got my laptop today, no dead pixels, no coil whine, no dirt under screen and very minimal light leakage! Pretty good! It's a mid tier model as I already had a SSD to put in.

Now I may be missing something but I can't figure out why my left click button will work for things like holding it to scroll on the page ends and cut and paste but I can't double click with it for some reason. I hate tapping as it happens way to easily despite any settings. I'd much rather double click the left trackpad button but for the life of me I can't figure out why it's not working. Did the driver uninstall/re-install disabled all the guestures etc, still won't work for double clicking.

I've done everything in the wiki, any ideas? Other than that, it's awesome, coming from a carbon x1, this is a very nice machine. I just hope its a setting or driver issue, rather than hardware.

thanks!