XPS 15 (L521X) Owner's Lounge

I am seeing the random scroll-down behavior as well. I plan to roll back the drivers immediately.

Does Dell monitor this thread anymore?

 

so it's not just me. I rolled mine back and it ruined my wifi for some reason. But the scroll problem still exists now on the older driver. It wasn't there before, so I'm thinking the change didn't get rolled back completely for me

 

Well i just went to the dell drivers page and I can see that they have listed the Wireless Killer N 1202 card on their website. Does this mean that Dell are now using this card? Dell are coming out next week to change my 6235 to the Dell 1901 but if that doesn't fix the problem do I request the Killer N, How'd you guys get yours?

 

I've ordered the Killer Wireless N 1202 and the Intel 6235 module and two different antennas. The Killer card is on the way but the rest arrived:


The XPS 15 will be delivered on monday.

Upgrade Two:

 

I bought my killer-n off amazon.

Dell has been using it on Alienware systems. I was a little surprised that they put our a driver set for the xps but it works fine on mine (minimal checks - needs morentesting ).

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

 

Mine came with the Dell 1901. I bought the Killer N. Performance-wise the Killer N is slightly better than the Dell 1901 but still unacceptable when compared to other wireless devices. By slightly better I mean that it added a couple of feet to the range. When in range I am getting good speeds with either. My router is a Linksys E4200.

 

I got my killer n 1202 from dell, after years of issues and many emails and calls, I requested it from the customer resolution person helping me. he did his complete best on replacing my breaking down 1645 and trying to solve every possible problem this system has. he also informed me that when a fix is found he will contact me even though I no longer have a warranty the fix applies to all.

Killer N added speed up and down but range is only better by a few feet. had the e4200 then it died and I still had a warranty on it so best buy gave me the ea6500.. no change in performance.

 

Thanks for the responses guys.
Dell are coming out and installing the Dell 1901 card next Tuesday or Wednesday. I guess i'll wait till then and see how that card performs before i think about my next step. Although according to 80% of you there's no change. But what have a got to lose, besides WIDI.

I'll test and post results as soon as I get the card.

 

I wonder if it's possible to use the l521x in a dual boot configuration.
Replace the hd with a SSD (set BIOS to AHCI mode), boot windows from the SSD and a small linux from the msata?

Anyone tried this?

 

@ josh_k3
Why not? Unset the RAID and it should work as you wish. But it should be easier if you reinstall windows. And windows must be installed first because windows does not like the linux bootmanager

 

XPS users are still experiencing wifi problems in this thread:

http://en.community.dell.com/suppor...-wireless/f/3324/t/19458762.aspx?PageIndex=21

It looks like most have come to the conclusion that slow wifi performance is the result of a hardware/engineering defect.

Has anyone emailed the Consumer's Union about this yet? CU has done a pretty good job of shaming other tech companies into fixing hardware problems in the past...

 

Replaced 6235 with the Killer-N today.Better performance, but range did not improve at all. I even had a few less feet of range than with the 6235.

So this seems to be a problem with the aerial placement in the display and Killer-N + external adapter is one of the best solutions.

I'm curious wether the next generation of the l521x ships with non-shielded aerial placement in the display.
Problem is: this might admit the engineering flaw of the current model and perhaps add to a legal grounds to force Dell to exchange all l521x with inacceptable WIFI.

 

hey guys! pulled this from the dell forums.

Posted byNPxps15replied on01-27-2013 8:33 AM

" FIXED!!!!!i had the exact same problem. First off I got my xps 15 L521X earlyJanuary2013 and it came with the dell wireless D1901 card and windows 8. I was getting about a third of the speed compared to my old laptop at about 10 metres and a wall from the router. Only getting the same speed if my XPS was next to the router.

I have an old router and am still using 802.11g. After reading all the forums and posts about this issue i was considering upgrading to a new router and hoping that since a new router should help me get better speed and distance then that would bemanageable. Until i figured out that at all my other usual places to use my laptop the wireless wa also terrible.

I contacted dell support and they told me they had to talk to engineering, and about 2 days later they got back to me and said that engineering has a fix for this known issue and that it is a "display hinge kit", which turns out to be a complete new display (which has the antenna inside). The technician that installed the new display said that he had heard the antenna had been redesigned. straight away my wireless was good. no need to change any settings on my router or anything like that. I am now actually getting about 10% faster then i was on my old laptop in the sameposition(about 10 metres and a wall away). I haven't tried my laptop at other places yet but this seems to be a fix. I am planning to upgrade my router as well since 802.11g isnt the best for distance compared with 802.11n.Oh and i live in Australia."

 

Glad to hear that. Mine arrives tomorrow. After it warms up (frosty outside ^^) I will post my results. *excited*

 

For some reason, my synaptics drivers are causing slow boot times for me. I uninstalled and reinstalled different ones and it happens with the generic and dell one. But when I just don't use their drivers, I get normal boot times

 

go into services and changes the non essentiel stuff to delayed start.

 

I've already done that. I have an ssd and pretty much delayed everything besides MSE and my usb 3.

It is definitely a driver issue. Ugh this only happened after I updated to that crap new driver from dell with the messed up scrolling. Even rolling it back doesn't work anymore

 

So my test results:
Was haltet Ihr vom Dell XPS 15 (L521X) - Schade die haben leider kein...

5 meter / 16 feet resulted 10 MB/s


This is similar to my old VAIO.

But 10 meter / 33 feet resulted only 0-1 MB/s:


My VAIO was able to load with 4-5 MB/s:


A strange thing is the transfer rate of the wifi status. The Dell 1901 has everytime 300 Mbit/s. My VIAO has a flexible rate (81 Mbit/s, 162 Mbit/s, 216 Mbit/s, 243 Mbit/s, 270 Mbit/s, 300 Mbit/s etc.).

This test was done with 5 Ghz. I will repeat this test with 2,4 Ghz tomorrow.

The next thing is the display. I can see a grid. This is not easy to shoot. Its not as extreme as in this photo but you can image the "shadow" between the pixels resulting the grid:


My question is: Has anyone a really perfect display without seeing a grid / single pixels? I never saw such a grid on other displays. My 18 inch has the same resolution and there you can see nothing like that.

 

Anyone called dell to see if this is legit?

 

I've called Dell Germany. Both (display pixel grid and wifi) are known issues and there is no fix available.

 

I'm not doubting NPxps15's post in good faith on the Dell forums, but I'd be extremely suprised if the wifi fix (new lid / antenna assy) was readilly available in a remote and small sales region like Australia, before any news of the same in US or Europe.

 

I sent out an email to Terry_B at Dell US, saying "Finally a fix", and he replied that he was unaware of a fix or new LCD kit (1/27 - 5:43pm). Since I purchased the L521X, Dell has been horrible with information and fixing this issue, but Terry_B has been pretty straightforward and honest from the beginning - so I have a little more faith in his rsponse. I don't even know why I got a little excited about the fix.

 

"Hope springs eternal"


Sent from my brain using neurons fueled by glucose

 

Well Dell came over and replaced the Intel card with the Dell 1901 card. The speeds are actually worse (I'm lucky to get over 0.5 mbs) but the range has improved slightly. They are now coming back next week to replace the whole back cover. An interesting thing is the technician did acknowledge the issue and he said that they are having the same problem with the all in one desktops that have the aluminium back, and went on to say that engineering are aware of the problem with the laptop and desktops and are currently trying to find out a way to redesign the aluminum back/ antenna placement.

 

Got the same response from Terry. Emailed him about replacing the intel card with a killer N, he's sending a technician with it

 

Just hope to see Dell fair enough to upgrade all deficient laptops.

 

I've finished my test:
- Dell 1901 5m 10 MB/s and 10m 0,5 MB/s
- Killer N 1202 5m 12 MB/s and 10m 3 MB/s
- Intel N 6325 5m 2 MB/s and 10m 100 kb/s

As you can see the Killer N 1202 has the best transfer rates and the Intel is totally crap.

I prefer installing the Killer N, but without the big software package. The Dell package includes the necessary driver files. Unpack, abort the software installation and choose manual driver installation through the hardware manager.

I won't test other antennas. I'm happy.

 

Mgutt: you testing 2.4 or 5 Ghz band?


Sent from my brain using neurons fueled by glucose

 

What sounds very strange to me is the difference between the Dell 1901 and thr Killer N 1202, because those 2 cards use the exact same wifi Atheros AR9462 chipset. So, in the same environment (same PC, same antennas, etc), I don't understand how results can be so differents.

@mgutt: what are your testing conditions exactly?

@c0derbear: you didn't test a Dell 1901, right?

 

5 Ghz, but what I've tested with 2.4 Ghz was no big difference.

 

Is anybody experiencing event 153 in Windows 8? It's very rare but sometimes I get: "The IO operation at logical block address {random address here} was retried" in the System Event log. I don't remember getting this when I was on Windows 7. I have the 512 GB Samsung P830 SSD.

 

nope, don't have one available.

out of curiosity maybe I'll surf flea-bay for a take-off. it's no big deal to drop it in and do some fundamental tests at home.

i'm "happy" with the killer-n as for my use it gives me what I need, but then like I've said before I kind of live in an internet backwaters and things don't flow fast for me anywhere I use my machine. The place I hit the net that has the best connection is the college where my wife teaches, and the 5 ghz connection there regularly puts me in the 15 Mbps u/d zone (give or take a few Mbps).

it was interesting to me how BADLY it sucked with my father-in-law's Airport Extreme, though I resisted the thought of getting the admin p/w from him and playing around with it. They live in FL, I'm in PA, I'd hate to leave something he doesn't understand behind to figure out. Bad enough he convinced me to connect a USB drive to it to share for he and his wife's Mac devices.

 

Just as a follow up... I ran CrystalDiskInfo and my CRC Error count is 10. It's below the threshold but still...this is a 2 weeks old laptop...going to have Dell come and replace my board.

 

I've installed one of the cards and left the bottom cover open (because the mini screws will break to fast). Then I turnaround the nb and boot up. I install the driver manually through the device manager and restart the nb. Now I connect to my 5 GHz WiFi. The router is a German product called AVM Fritz!Box. I've connected a Synology DS 213+ to it by Gigalan (NAS max. is 80 MB/s through cable connection). Now I open the NAS Admin panel to be sure there is no other traffic and choose through \\diskstation\ a big Video file on the NAS and copy it on my Desktop. Now I Check the Windows Transfer rate. I've tested it in 5 meter and 10 meter distance. The 10 meter goes through 2-3 walls and ceilling. There are little differences in the Test result possible as I moved the Display so the antenna angle differs in every test but roughly it should be exact enough to differ between the cards. Sorry for my poor English.

 

Thanks guys. That would be a shame if just a little change in the display angle is responsible of such differences But with the L521x, everything is possible

 

Hi!

As I mentioned some time ago, we have 3 XPS 15 computers... All are max configured as we could get them at the time of buying which was 3 months or so back.

Specs:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3612QM CPU
16GB RAM
FHD screen (1920x1080)
Blue-Ray drive
Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N 6235
One of them (mine) has Samsung 830 SSD but the rest have Crucial or so, space wise the same - 128GB
1TB 5400RPM HDD for storage
all have been upgraded to A12 BIOS

One runs Ubuntu 12.04 and the rest windows 7.

Storage is configured like this: linux and one of W7 are configured in the same way: OS is installed on SSD and data storage is HDD, linux has more advanced config as there is an easy way of telling where to store all user settings and tmp/var folders etc. to minimize SSD wear, one of W7 have rapid storage enabled (standard). OSes for all 3 computers were installed manually, coz we are in corporate world etc. Linux have encrypted user storage - HDD fully encrypted, one windows has the same - HDD encrypted, for one W7 (which has rapid thing) HDD is not encrypted.

Issues.
Common issue to all of them are rather poor wifi, it's not really bad it's just not as good as old ThinkPads have, we see fewer networks and connection is not as stable in certain conditions, BUT that is not really an issue, as our corporate routers are mostly fine and we don't use N mode at all, just standard g. At home, reception is not as good as we want, but it's not really a big issue.
One laptop had loose touchpad but which was fixed by Dell support at the same day as reported.
There were some very tiny glitches like fans would not turn once (just once in 3-4 months) after suspend on one laptop, batterry charge indicator (the light next to touchpad) won't change color to yellow when charging on one of laptops, DP -> VGA adapter is not working as good as HDMI -> VGA probably due to reason that DP is soldered to nVidia and HDMI to Intel and to use DP nVidia must be turned on, some minor windows BSOD and small things as well, in linux all works except seamless HD4000 <-> nVidia switch, but we are in corporate world and don't do demanding games on laptops, just some old school / newer ones on W7 and the same in linux (native and wine), some from steam.

The good part.
Laptop is generally quiet (if nVidia is turned off ), all works, there are no throttling issues in standard loads, CPU temp won't go more than 65 degrees anyway, usually it stays under 60, there are NO GRID lines as far as my non-artistic eye can see, no other strange things.

If You have questions plz ask, I don't know what to tell more, it just works

regards
Kirurgs

 

when converting home hd ats videos to mp4, mpeg 4 etc temp goes up to 98 even though the load on each core is 14% then cpu goes from 2.7 down to 1.7... also, I thought this cpu was able to go to 3.1...

 

;(

Mine does proper scaling ... 2.8 GHz @ 4 cores to 3.1 GHz for single core. Win 8 and bios 13, all current drivers.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

 

A very real problem in a very real manufacturing plant - a scanning device using wifi looses signal when trying to simultaneously use Bluetooth. I wont disclose which plant, but to get an idea - car manufacturing plant in Germany. I have seen the issue with an XPS l702x as well - after disabling the Bluetooth from device manager frequent dropouts stopped.

Has anyone tested the XPS 15 with a WiFi card without Bluetooth or tried disabling it on one with it?

My guess doesnt mean that every laptop with such cards will experience the problem - antenna configurations do differ between models and brands. It would be great to get some opinions/observations.

 

The bluetooth chipset is shutdown at every start of my L521x running Linux, and my wifi is not good, even if slightly better with this laptop v2.

 

Help - new to both the forum and this thread. I'm in the process of replacing an Inspiron with a heavily configured XPS15. However, unlike the older model, different contacts at Dell tell me that I can't configure Wireless Display/WIDI with the new XPS 15, which to me would be a show-stopper. Is this true, and if so, is the config info for the Alienware M14x accurate, allowing the ordering of WIDI/Wireless Display?

Thanks in advance.

 

As you will get a very worse Signal with the Intel card you should Not think about that. but regarding Widi... This is Not a good at all. I've tested it with an other nb and it has Not enough frames per second to watch a YouTube Video. Maybe in Future miracast is better.

 

For those with the killer n card, did you you the generic driver from Killer or do you use the Dell drivers?

Any difference between the two? Tech is coming today with the card to replace my intel one

 

I used the Dell drivers but aborted the installation to have access to the files (Killer Wireless does not offer an archive to extract the needed driver files). Then I opened the device manager and started the driver installation manually.

I installed the generic package first, but the optimization step of the original Killer Wireless setup forced me to install flash to start the speedtest.net benchmark. After that I uninstalled anything. And afterwards I didn't see any sense in installing a 200 MB software package to use WiFi.

 

I have used both generic and dell packages for killer n, seem to work the same.

I did not fight the killer monitor app configuration - I just deleted the shortcut from the All Users Startup list so it doesn't run.


Sent from my brain using neurons fueled by glucose

 

WiDi will become less an issue as miracast is picked up, i think.


Sent from my brain using neurons fueled by glucose

 

I counted 12 seconds:
W7 legacy mode with sd card installed: 32 seconds
W7 legacy mode sd card deactivated / not installed: 20 seconds

Is it possible to have lazy/defered loading the sd card driver?

 

Problem solved: I've removed the Dell SD card dummy:


No, this is not a joke. This was really the problem

 

Interesting.

Still wondering about all the reboots.

Sleep, sure. Hibernate, ok. Reboot? Almost never.


Sent from my brain using neurons fueled by glucose

 

HAHAHAHA! That's great. It makes sense since the dummy card is in contact with the reader contacts. But I think I'll just keep my sd reader disabled. Rather have the dummy card in and keep dust out then have the reader enabled. Don't use the reader enough to need it. Only need it when I'm transferring pictures and I can easily re-enable after boot.

But awesome find