Owner's Thread: Dell Inspiron 11 3147 2-in-1

Why need Dell send a stick? Factory image is inside your hard drive that came with the 3147 and the Dell Backup and Recovery can be access via holding SHIFT then touch "Restart" and reboot

 

I just can't get bluetooth to stay connected. I have 2 mice, which pair and connect. but soon they are not connected. I upgraded to the Intel AC 2760 card. I have unchecked "Allow the computer to turn off the device to save power" in Device Manager on both the card and on Intel Wireless Bluetooth.

Any help?

Thanks

 

Yes, I am full aware of the of the recovery features .. however, if you wipe a drive completely to install something out of the ordinary .. you wipe ALL recovery features, thus the need for the original Dell stick to rebuild back to factory default.

 

No, I didn't. The quickset locking app is looking for Dell's driver and can't find them. It might be possible to fool it by altering some identifiers in the inf file of the touchpad drivers but I haven't tried it.

 

I have the same issue. Please help us!

 

I'm choosing between buying the Pentium processor (3147) and the i3 processor (3148), can anyone speak to the performance difference between the two? I tried searching for some benchmarks from each version but could only find things for the pentium version, not a lot on the i3.

Getting it for my wife who mostly does simple things through web browsers, word processing, etc, however, she opens a crap ton of windows and programs simultaneously so bogs her system down that way. Is this something the processor would help with, or would upgrading the RAM and to SSD be a better way to spend that money?

Thanks!

 

RAM and SSD upgrades will help her more than the i3 would. The Pentium has plenty of power to run all of those applications - I even run Adobe Lightroom on it with no complaints. I don't even think you'll need 8gb RAM - I'd recommend doing the SSD right away and waiting on the RAM.

 

Just a bit of info needed. Does this 2-in-1 support the Dell Active Stylus with pressure input?

 

Well, it doesn't support active pen. Confirmed from both Dell Tech support as well as retailer.

 

I have a 3147. Windows 10. Screen brightness 40%. Power option = power saver. W-Fi always on. But why am I only able to get 4.5 hours of battery life? Very disappointing.

 

4.5 hours seems much too short. It sounds like a dumb question, but are you sure your battery is getting a full charge?

I'm still using Win 8.1 for a while (may never go to 10), and I get about 9.5 to 10 hours on battery, wifi always active and at least 20 tabs open in Firefox, running the occasional online video. I've set my on-battery power options to 80% brightness, screen off after 10 min inactive, hibernate after 20 min or when I close the lid. Also, I've turned off all Live Tiles (news, weather, etc) so they don't update all the time. I have Dell's Extended Battery Life turned on and just those few power tweaks. I still have the original spin drive in mine, which uses more power than SSD. When I'm running Linux instead of Windows the Dell power options aren't available, but I still get over 8 hours on battery with the same kind of use.

Your power issue may be related to some bugs not yet worked out in Win 10. I had to return my laptop to Dell last week to replace the keyboard/touchpad under warranty (easier to FedEx it on Dell's dime than to take the whole thing apart to fix it myself, and turnaround was fast). When I talked with the Dell support tech she suggested that I should not upgrade to Win 10 yet, said it's still buggy, including power options that apparently conflict with Dell's. She said there have been some complaints about Win 10 and shorter laptop battery time. Maybe that's your problem? I think there's a big update to Win 10 coming out very soon, or maybe it just has. You might see if that changes your power consumption. And/or Dell may need to update their own power-savings application (I can't recall its name).

I wish I knew for sure what to suggest, but the Dell tech's comment makes sense to me. I hope that helps. Keep us informed, OK?

 

I appreciate your interest.

Yes, my battery charges to 100%. It seems you have a dual boot setup, 8.1 and Linux. It's hard to believe that my poor battery life could be caused by Win 10, but I'm sending my 3147 back and will receive a 3148 in a few days. I'll leave 8.1 installed for a while to test your theory, but I doubt if I'll see a difference, because this is my 3rd or 4th 3147 most of which ran 8.1 with about the same battery life.

Thanks again

 

I recently bought this laptop for work reasons. I will be traveling quite a bit. I also wanted to use it to stream video to my chromecast that I'll be taking with me.

My wifi is 5Ghz, for some reason I can't find it on the 3147. Any ideas?

The chromecast is automatically running off of the 5ghz.

 

The default card that comes with the 3147 is the DW1707 and does not support 5ghz 'a' band.

 

Is there a way to switch out the wifi card for one that does recognize 5ghz?

I'm not novice when it comes to computers but I wouldn't even say I'm intermediate when it comes to my knowledge of changing things out.

 

Yes I've done it. I forgot the card I used but I think it was the Intel 7265-AC. (My computer isn't in front of me right now.)

 

Please let me know! I bought this thing for work but I also use it for my personal things too. It's a pain not being able to stream my shows like the walking dead and having to watch them from their iPhone app. What's the average cost? Is it easy enough to do myself?

 

Upgraded to Win 10 1511 and system hangs on boot up - seems to be related to HID Sensor Collection V2. Disable that it boots fine but of course lose all touch functionalities. Anyone upgraded yet?

 

Hi! After the upgrade, windows 10, damaged grub and became bad working touchpad! Grub restored, but drivers do not have official site. Somebody please share in the latest driver on the touchpad! Thank you!

 

Hello.
Why a website dell (3147) it is so little drivers for windows 10? Just three days ago there were four drivers for the chipset . Currently there is only one. Is it enough just this one to chipset?
What drivers need to install a dell 3147 to win 10 1511?
Also I have a problem with the startup win 10 1511. How do I solve this problem?
(sorry for my English.He writer with the help of the translator)

 

Look earlier in the thread, there are specific posts about the card and the drivers.

 

I recently installed the fall update for Windows 10 and now lost my touchpad gestures. Tried reinstalling the dell input drivers but still not working. All devices in device manager have drivers installed.

EDIT: just decided to reinstall windows. Works again now. It appears I have to wait 30 days before I can get the fall update again. Hopefully it works this time!

 

Hi, I am recovering this old post. I am facing a KEYBOARD problem with my 3147. Some keys are failing. Basically, they fail when I boot the system (keys do not respond to typing) and after some minutes and some typing, they begin to respond normally. On screen and an external keyboard work well.

Keys that fail are on the LEFT side of the keyboard, basically `, 1, q, a, z, control, caps lock and tab. Fn also.

I would like to avoid warranty. I am in Brasil and it might take more than one month to send and receive the machine fixed. Also, found a person in Australia with the same problem on 2 units (even the new unit she received).

So, any chance this would be a SW problema? Drivers, Win10, etc?

I am running Win10 with a SSD (same one I used to replace the original HD that came with my 3 year old HP notebook).

Thks in advance, Alex.

 

OMG my 3147 must be a clone of yours. The left side of my keyboard hasn't worked since windows 10 update and I just gave up using it. It has been sitting in it's bag under my table. I tried every conceivable fix, followed every post or suggestion I could find to fix the problem. $450 brick. First and LAST Dell purchase EVER.

 

Well, we have a lot of clones, found at least more 2 folks on foruns with the problem. You are the 3rd.

I just moved back to original HD and original Windows 8 and the problem persists. Do you remember if your 3147 started failing only on Windows 10? My 3147 fails after boot, it takes 5 to 10 minutes to have those left side keys working. Both with Windows 8 or 10.

Regards (will be my 1st and LAST Dell also).

 

I honestly can't remember the exact circumstance but it is either the windows 10 update or a BIOS update. If I remember correctly I did both on the same same day, The keyboard started intermittently a few times after reboots and then permanently within hours and has been a paperweight since.

 

It seems a common fault with this model. You need to remove the bottom cover and reseat the keyboard cable in its connector. You can see the connector in this guide http://www.myfixguide.com/manual/dell-inspiron-11-3147-disassembly/ Its the connector next to the sata cable. There are 2 locking tabs on each edge of the motherboard connector that slide out toward the hdd to release the flat keyboard cable. Use the clear plastic tab on the keyboard cable to pull it out then put it back in and then push the two locking tabs back in place.

When removing the bottom cover you need to use a plastic pry bar to carefully pry the case out away from base a little to release it. Be gentle or tabs will break off the base cover. Only attempt this if you are confident as its easy to break things.

My Skylake i3 version of this unit also suffered from the keyboard fault. I reseated the cable and it is ok for now but I imagine it will cause problems in the future.

EDIT: Update - had the keyboard/palmrest replaced under warranty - reseating the cable only held for a few days. Weird fault...

 

Figured I'd chime in since its been a while.

I recently wiped my 3147 and reset the bios to factory defaults. I installed windows 10, and installed all the drivers needed from dell's website. Everything seems to work great and I haven't ran into any issues except for one.

It only happens on restart or if I have quick boot turned off. It boots all the way except the screen goes black. it hangs at the welcome / login screen. the only way to "wake" it up is by actually touching the screen, only then does the display come back to life and asks me to log in.

Other than that I have no other complaints. Battery life is great. No "unknown" items in device manager...etc

 

Ahhh! Thank you! I just finally got around to upgrading to 1511 (it's my media machine, was in no rush) and it blackscreens after the Dell logo on startup. I did a full diagnostic, messed with the BIOS, tried everything I could, but I couldn't get a proper boot. I was all set to reinstall Windows 10 when I saw this post. All I had to do was touch the screen!

That said, what a silly and frustrating glitch to introduce with 1511. I guess I'll be touching the screen every boot from now on until it's (hopefully) patched.

 

My thoughts exactly, everything works fine though when i have quick boot enabled. just a fyi

 

Posted this couple pages ago. There is a thread in Microsoft Community on this - so far they are just no help at all. You guys should post there and speak out.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...d-sensor/aed68366-3551-4566-bff7-21787cb676bb

 

Quick boot/shutdown works is because quick boot doesn't really turn everything off and restart - it kinda hibernate the system drivers. So once the drivers are loaded up, all work fine. If you restart of turn off quick boot where all drivers need to be loaded from scratch, you'll run into this problem.

 

I need some help. I returned my 3147 and on black friday bought a 3148. Everything's fine except bluetooth. The drivers disappear after installation from Device Manager. I have a Dell WM713 bluetooth mouse I really want to use. How should I install the correct drivers?
Thanks

 

Sometimes when I wake up my 3147 I have strange white stripes on screen. They dissapears after few minutes. Anybody have this same problem? Photo:

 

Never seen that specifically, but occasional screen artifacting can happen when one of the screen power-saving modes is turned on. If you haven't already, you might try going into the Intel graphics options and disabling any display power-saving features (which... don't seem to actually improve battery life, regardless). In particular, if the problem only happens when on battery, a power-saving mode is probably the culprit.

 

It happens on battery and power supply. It might be damaged LCD/GPU? I wrote to Dell but they do not respond me from 4 days

 

Well, you didn't answer my question: are any of the power-saving modes turned on?

Is there a reason you're not just calling Dell support? I'd bet money that they won't have a solution, but it's worth a shot. If your warranty includes on-site, they'll send someone to replace a couple of parts, which might help. Otherwise, they're more likely to just replace the unit than figure out what's wrong.

I had the screen on my XPS 12 replaced twice before users (not Dell) realised that a flickering-screen issue was fixed just by turning off panel self-refresh. I wouldn't be surprised to find that something similar is happening to your machine. But if you think it's a hardware issue, just get a replacement.

 

I would call Dell Support for a replacement if it's still under warranty.

 

Yep, I had enabled aka "Display Energy Saving" in Intel Graphic Control Panel. I disabled it now and will see what happen in future. Thanks for the tip.

 

BIOS A09 has been released.

BIOS A09 is bad. Do NOT flash them.

 

i have same screen issue at boot in newest win 10, where i have to tap to get screen on latest windows 10. i installed new bios. new bios did not solve it for me. and new bios made my linux boot much slower. when i downgraded the bios back to A07, i then got drive inaccessible error, only in windows. apparently only way to fix that is to get into safe mode. now everything is back the way it was, but i still have the windows 10 issue on boot. has anyone tried downgrading to previous intel graphics driver ?? to try to resolve that.

 

Yep. BIOS A09 is bad. Do NOT flash them. My Windows 10 startup slower than on A07, and I can't sleep my computer. When I press power button nothing happen. I back to A07 and all working fine now, but first after downgrade I can't boot Windows 10 (got bluescreen with ;( emoticon). What the hell Dell?

 

Hi all. I just picked up a used one, is a Pentium quad core version, the 3147. It was upgrade to windows 10 from 8.1 by the time I got it. I bought a SSD and after reading all the posts from page 1, I am still confuse.
Here is what I've tried:
I created a recovery bootable USB from windows 10, then I swap my new SSD into the laptop. Changed to legacy boot, disable secure boot, SATA operation set to AHCI, save and exit. At boot option, I tried both legacy and UEFI, it just won't let me boot from the USB.
Went over this thread again, changed the USB from MBR to GPT. Tried in both legacy and UEFI, still no go.
When I tried in legacy, the screen in black and with a flickering underscore, it doesn't show the message "press any key to boot from CD/DVD". And it flick forever...........
When I tried in UEFI, I click "Troubleshoot", it doesn't give the option "Recover From Drive". It only show "Reset PC" and "Advance Option"
I can see my new SSD and the USB flash drive in BIOS.
My BIOS is A5, can someone tell me what I miss or what I've done wrong? My new SSD is still fresh, not yet format. It's a Transcend SSD360S 128G SSD, this is the only 7mm SSD I can get in my place.
Do I need to put the old HDD back and update the BIOS and redo a recovery USB from it? But from the post above, the latest BIOS, A09 is bad.
Any explanations in details are appreciate, I am totally lost here.
Thanks in advance guys............

 

Do you need to set the boot order in BIOS to boot from USB before HDD?

When I did my SSD upgrade, I used a usb-sata cable and cloning software to clone the old HDD to the SSD, then just swapped it over. Worked straight away.

 

i just set up a new 3147. i first installed a brand new clean ssd. then i disabled secure boot. then booted a linux usb install stick (arch), made a gpt disk and made an ESP partition which must be FAT32 formatted, of 100 mb, made linux partitions and made a ntfs parition. and installed arch and refind boot manager. it booted fine with arch only. then i used a win10 media usb made from the windows media tool and clean installed 10. works fine

if you only want windows. i would not bother with cloning etc. i would just use a linux boot usb, make a gpt disk with an ESP partition of 100 megs or so. make a ntfs partition, leave a little extra room, and make an install windows 10 usb and boot with that and install 10 clean. the clean install will install all dell drivers except the quickset utility and the accelerometer sensor. and will run better without all dell bloatware. if you have only windows on it, you can turn the secure back on after you are done. it only took 15 minutes to do a windows clean install.

 

Yes, I set the boot order in BIOS to boot from USB before HDD.

If use a cloning software, which one would the best to recommend? What am I need to do with the SSD first?

I only want Windows 10 and my Office 2013, I would not want those Dell junk bloatware.

 

This even confuse me more.............. Why a Linux Stick? The GPT disk is only the bootable recovery disk or the iso disk or the new SSD also need to GPT?

 

I need some help with a new SSD. My Seagate hard drive failed a couple days ago with the warranty expired at the beginning of this month. I ordered a Crucial BX100 240GB not realizing it would be this much trouble to reinstall Windows 10. Are there any AHCI SATA drivers that work for installing Windows? I tried all the methods I could in this forum like trying 8.1 Update 1, and all the drivers on the Dell site and Intel site. I don't have a bootable backup because I never thought I would need anything other than the Windows disc. The drive will install in ATA mode, but speeds are diminished and I feel like its just a band-aid to the problem. I tried to convert the ATA installation to AHCI using the safe mode method and a registry edit, but that just leaves me a blue screen. All the links posted near the beginning of this thread are dead, so if anyone has those drivers somewhere they would be greatly appreciated!

 

I used the Samsung software that came with the drive, but if your drive doesn't include any free software you could try this free one http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

 

If I clone the HDD to the SSD, will I also clone the bloatware? Since it clone everything, then I suppose it does. If so, how to get rid of those bloatware?