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

PLEASE help. I have spent over 7 hours trying to swap out the included 500gb HDD with a 256 SSD from my older laptop. Everything I try does not work. I boot from my recovery key that I either made myself from the dell recovery or through windows backup, or from the official USB recovery key mailed to me, and it will not allow me to proceed with the reformat/installation.

What am I missing. This shouldn't be this hard. Any insights are much appreciated!

 

I made a bootable Windows image on a USB stick. Replaced my 500 GB drive with a ssd 250gb evo Samsung. Changed to legacy in bios. Then booted the computer with the stick. Then installed win 8 with no problems. The key should be in bedded in the hardware and no need to enter it.

 

Was your SSD fresh? Mine is from my previous Dell 3137. I have tried everything and nothing works? Did you use the backup usb that dell provides (on request), or did you use dell recovery backup software to create the bootable key or did you use the windows backup software?

 

Mine ssd was fresh. I created the bootable at the Microsoft site. Have you used the guide on post 93?

 

has anybody tried installing the windows 10 preview?

 

I'm currently running the Win 10 Technical Preview on my 11-3147. Runs fine, though the Dell Touchpad driver seems to poop out after a bit of use (touchpad reverts to "basic" use, all gestures/features stop working).

I used the info in Post # 93 to do a clean install of 8.1 on my SSD, loaded up the drivers as instructed and in the order listed in the post, and then after I had applied all updates I did a recovery image. I then booted from my Win 10 Technical Preview iso (which was on a USB) and installed as an upgrade. The preview is cool, but I wouldn't make it your main OS if you use the notebook frequently as it will be much more prone to issues/etc. I'm probably going to restore my recovery image tonight and get back on 8.1 for the time being.

 

I've been having issues with touchpad as well. Just like you've described, it'll work great for a while after a reboot, but after a bit of time, or sleep, it'll go bonkers and I'll loose all gestures/features/settings. I thought it may be that I'm on Win 10 Tech Preview, but it seems to be a crappy driver issue, even on 8.1.

I'd be happy to gear if anyone has a fix/suggestions!

 

The card finally arrived a week or so ago, so I had it installed and it works just fine. It indeed seem to be genuine Dell's part. Shipping from Europe took about 10 days and with shipping and euro to dollar conversion it cost me $25.

 

I had the same problem which I mentioned earlier in the thread. Only solution I found was to reinstall win 8.1 but not follow post 93 ie not worry about the cursor still being active while in tablet mode. My GF uses the laptop but so far after 2 weeks of this setup she has reported zero instances of the previous touchpad going crazy. In my book the payoff for stability is better than any occasional annoyance while in the infrequently used tablet mode. Just my observations.

 

So what driver are you using? If none, then do you have gesture support? I don't mind having it active during tablet use, but I can't give up gestures...

 

TBH the GF doesn't use gestures so I didn't check. I installed all the usual dell touchpad etc drives as separate individual .exe command installs, ie not 'injecting' them directly through device manager as post 93 does. It would stand to reason the gestures would still work but I don't have the laptop to hand to check.

 

I just got a Dell Inspiron 3147 two in one. Can anyone recommend a USB ethernet adapter for occasional use?

 

Does anyone know if the Silicon Power (SP) S80 480GB will work in place of the HD?
Thanks,
tOD

 

I bought this one http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-3-0-t...uting_NetworkingCables_RL&hash=item2c8a6a651c which works fine.

Note I didn't need to install any drivers (dell has generic USB to Ethernet driver on the webpage). I suspect any generic adapter should work without problems

 

Hope this is helpful for some...
I just installed a Crucial 256gb M550 in my 3147 and I didn't encounter ANY issues, once I got it going correctly.
Didn't have all that much on it, so I used a 32gb USB stick and created a bootable Factory Back up (not recovery/rescue) using Dell Backup (the free one). So that was setup on the USB Stick, went into Bios and had it boot to the stick. Opened up the laptop, installed the SSD, booted it up and followed the instructions. Took a little while with all of the updates and extra app updates, since it's the factory set up that is going onto the SSD. But no issues with the process and functionality.

I did get stuck for a while since I kept trying to use the Recovery Bootable Back up option, but once I did the Factory Back up, it worked fine.

3 second boot time is pretty amazing. I think that is in line with my older Macbook Air. Plus everything else goes so much smoother than with the HDD. Good luck to anyone upgrading.

 

I have had my 3147 for a few weeks and want to share some reflections on the initial setup.

The first thing I did was to swap the HD for a 500gb Samsung evo 850. Using the samsung software that came with the 850 (and an external LG dvd drive that I had, as well as a USB3/SATA connector that I purchased), I cloned the Dell HD onto the EVO 850. It worked flawlessly. The only thing that did not appear to clone over was a partition that holds the Dell software for resetting the computer. Since I still have the original HD (and can reinstall from that), that partition is not needed.

Less flawless was the endless stream of windows updates pushed out by Microsoft. Apparently, my unit must have shipped with an antiquated version of Win 8.1 (if that is possible). Every time I turned on or off the machine, it seemingly took for ever to load/install windows updates.

The other thing I noticed was that my machine also shipped with antiquated versions of both the BIOS (A01) and various drivers. When in tablet mode, the trackpad was still active, which made tablet mode nearly unusable. Upgrading the BIOS (A03) and the various drivers seems to have fixed that. The upgraded BIOS also allows me to set my battery so that it no longer charges up to 100%. I keep it at a 70% max to help prolong overall battery life (similar to the energy manager feature on my Lenovo Yoga 2 pro), and bump it up when I go on a long trip.

Overall, I am quite happy with the 3147.

 

I bought my 3147 in December when it was $299 at Staples.

Thanks to all the posters here, and especially #93. I cloned the stock drive to a Kingston V300 SSD ($10 in Staples Rewards helped pay for it). Very nice performance.

My unit did have a bad pixel or two in the display. Dell sent me a box, I shipped it to them, they replaced the LCD panel and sent it back. About 10 days round trip which I did not mind.

 

Well I just bought two of these in November 2014, the first one gave me a headache with the touch pad drivers, have no idea why, fixed it and gave it to my daughter, this second one has been fine but I did not like the performance until I tweaked it a lot. Both are pentium Quad cores with 4gb ram.

So I installed new fonts gdipp ( the Microsoft fonts in win 8.1 would not work right with some web sites no matter what I did including turning on adjust clear type)

I turned off a lot of things like aero peak

Made up my own power policy.

Decreased window reaction times ( used a tweak from the windows club for windows 8 )

I have kept the hard drive, i wanted a large drive for storage.

Until I did these things the performance disappointed me now its pretty good.

 

Wound up using an Eluktron (sp?) that I got on sale for the SSD replacement for the hard drive and the 8GB of memory was from Critical. All worked well on my first try, who says Miracles don't happen.

Anyone using a stylus with One Note or similar program?. My hand writing is not good, but transition from script to text works well. I don't think the stylus is really supposed to work with the 3147, but I am having fun with mine, but always looking for improvement. Please help if you can.

I was looking for a decent case or a leather messenger bag and found a really neat messenger bar for a bargain price on Amazon. It came from India via DHL and arrived in four days. I have trouble getting mail from a neighboring state that quickly, some times.

I really like this forum and appreciate those who contribute and those who make it possible.

 

Dell sent me a $25 eGift card for registering in their Advantage Rewards after registering the 3147. I used it to purchase the 7260AC dual-band WiFi card ($25.99, refurbished) mentioned a few pages up, I cant locate the Dell part right now. Added a couple of bucks to cover tax.
Will report performance when I get the card.

 

My Intel SSD 530 still do not works with 3147 in AHCI mode so I must sell it I want buy Samsung 850 Pro. Anyone tested it with 3147?

 

Just got mine on fleabay for $309 refurbed. The annoying random screen brightness & dimming is fixed by disabling the "enabling adaptive brightness" in advanced power options. Updated the drivers and lost the keyboard lock. Got it back, but the screen position is 180deg out when in tablet mode, just like one of the previous posts, no fix yet. Took 8GB of PC3L memory no problem.

 

Has anyone experienced and successfully troubleshot a problem with the touchscreen where random "ghost" touches will occur without actually touching the screen? The issue seems to be intermittent and restarting/shutting down the computer helps sometimes but not others.
I have tried updating video drivers and Bios . . . any thoughts?

similar to this video:

 

Just got the 3147 (Pentium) model from Staples yesterday for $210 brand new! Has anyone tried screen protectors on this? Are there tempered glass ones (they feel smoother) ? What type of screen is on the front of this laptop? Plastic or Glass?

Thanks for this thread. Great information!

 

This thing has a super-cheap build. I tried taking of the back plate to install RAM, and as i was pulling it off, the backplate cracked. now I have a crack in the bottom of this brand new laptop. Anyone else have the same problem?

 

I am trying to figure out what type of ram I should buy. I know the laptop DRR3L ram is for it and it for lower wattage. I am on my way to micro center right now. Need to find out what is the best for 8gb

Update I bought this hope it works

 

It should. It says 1.35 volts.

 

Got my iPearl case in today. It's a red clear snap on that has two halves. It almost allows you to sandwich it into tablet mode, but there's a 1-2 inch gap where the pieces are too thick to allow it totally flat. Overall, it's a nice case that should offer adequate protection (not drop protection) from bangs and scuffs when setting it down, etc.

I have a youtube video being uploaded right now.

Here it is

 

Hi Celestial303, I reckon you have a 3148 too? So after you replaced with a ssd using the method above does everything work perfectly for you? including the touchpad?

 

Hi, I considering getting a Dell 3147 with the quad core pentium.
To those who have owned it for a while, please share your issues with this laptop, so I have a better idea what to expect.

1. I've read complaints about the accuracy of trackpad and that the keyboard flexes a bit.
2. Some of you are upgrading to 8GB, does it really make a noticable performance difference over the standard 4GB?
3. Some of you are replacing the WIFI card which is only single band. I'll mostly be using WIFI at public or hotel hotspots, will the standard WIFI
card be sufficient for my needs?
4. Also, I'm used to Windows 7 and very reluctant to upgrade to a laptop with Windows 8.1, an OS which seems more appropriate for a tablet,
not for a laptop used for real work. I'm considering wiping the 3147 clean with a fresh install of Windows 7, wondering if anyone else did the same thing.

 

Hi all. Just picked up a 3147, and am liking it so far. However I'm having a troubling issue with the wireless.

Randomly, the wireless card just disappears and reappears from the Device Manager, and of course, it takes the network down with it. At first sight, this looks like a hardware issue of some sort, but I did remove a bunch of the Dell utilities and was thinking that could have an effect for some reason. I've also had a instance or two where when I reboot, I have no functionality of the touchscreen, position sensor, or advanced trackpad functions, in addition to the lack of wireless, but that seems to have not happened again since the last round of updates. Not sure that is related or not to the wireless problem, but it seemed odd.

I may try setting up a new installation of Windows, or Linux to try and rule out a hardware problem, but will see if there are any ideas here before I go that route.

 

The wireless is single band, not dual so that could account for dropped connections (even though it shows signal being connected on the task bar). Same thing happens to me, though I plan on upgrading the wifi card in a few weeks to circumvent this issue.

 

1. I've read complaints about the accuracy of trackpad and that the keyboard flexes a bit.
2. Some of you are upgrading to 8GB, does it really make a noticable performance difference over the standard 4GB?
3. Some of you are replacing the WIFI card which is only single band. I'll mostly be using WIFI at public or hotel hotspots, will the standard WIFI
card be sufficient for my needs?
4. Also, I'm used to Windows 7 and very reluctant to upgrade to a laptop with Windows 8.1, an OS which seems more appropriate for a tablet,
not for a laptop used for real work. I'm considering wiping the 3147 clean with a fresh install of Windows 7, wondering if anyone else did the same thing.

1. I don't use trackpads on laptops (always use BT mouse), but from what I used, it was fine. Keyboard has some flex in the middle if you purposely push down.

2. 4GB to 8GB is only noticeable if you run a lot of applications at the same time or photo/video editing where it demands a lot of available ram. Otherwise, if it's a few programs here and there, you won't notice a difference with upgrading. (example: if you use on average 3GB out of 4GB ram, it's not going to change things going to 8GB)

3. Next

4. This laptop was made for 8.1 (and 10), hence the tablet mode and the Metro style present in 8.1/10. Going back to Windows 7 seems like a downgrade.

 

Yeah, I may do the same and swap out with an Intel card if I can't get any resolution to my issue.

Unfortunately it seems more than just a poor signal problem for me, since the entire adapter is being removed from the Device Manager.

I did find and install newer generic Qualcomm drivers for the card to replace the Dell branded drivers, and while it hasn't been too long of a test period, I haven't had any issues yet.

 

Anyone have a list of which specific Dell branded programs can be removed (and what their equivalent program is) in this laptop?

I see a few like Dell Digital Delivery and others that seem like I wouldn't need them.

 

This is a great laptop, and I really recommend it even with your concerns.
1) I also noticed the keyboard/case flex and it really bothered me. The trackpad works fine, but by resting my palms on the case next to the trackpad, it would sometimes cause an accidental mouse click. This was a real problem for me, so I jerry-rigged it by adding Q-tips in between the battery and the inside of the case, around the track pad. This did a great job stiffening up the case, and it eliminated flex and accidental mouse clicks.
2) I do lots of multitasking with 4gb and it's fine.
3) I have the original wifi card, have used at public and hotel hotspots with no issues.
4) Windows 8.1 takes some getting used to, but you can use it the same as you used Windows 7. Especially with the free Windows 10 upgrade coming soon, which is supposed to bring back the start menu among other things, I wouldn't downgrade.

 

I just installed a 850 evo and it works great. The pro is overkill for the limitations for 2.0 gbps

 

This may have been said above - be very careful when removing the bottom to access the hard drive, battery or WIFi card. The plastic around the SD card slot is very fragile. It snapped upon my 4th opening. At least only in one place so it's still sort of there. It would be very easy to get it completely broken.

 

delete.

 

True. I looked at videos prior and for a laptop, the bottom cover was a biatch to get off. My old laptop only had two screws and the metal panel slid out, making upgrading really easy.

 

what causes this?

 

what qualcomm drivers did you install? i noticed my wifi went off completely with no option to turn it on or off. i had to restart the laaptop.

 

Static.

 

My system now tells me I need to activate Windows because my key is used by another computer.
This is after a couple of switches between the original HDD and a SSD cloned from the HDD, and also swapping the WiFi card with the Intel AC card.

How can another computer use my key, given that it's factory embedded in the BIOS?

It seems I need to call Microsoft, I will report once I've tried the call.

 

I used the drivers from here: https://www.atheros.cz/atheros-wireless-download.php?chipset=59&system=8

They seemed to work fine, but ultimately didn't fix my problem. WLAN card is becoming more erratic, almost never being detected now, not even in the Diagnostics built into the BIOS. Hopefully it's only the card that's bad and that my replacement Intel card I have on the way fixes things. Otherwise I guess I'll have to exchange the laptop.

 

The Intel AC 7260 card has a long discussion about problems at https://communities.intel.com/thread/47983?start=0&tstart=0.
I'm using the driver 7.14 from http://downloadcenter.intel.com/con...less_17.14.0_De164.exe&Lang=eng&Dwnldid=24656

I did not get my AC router yet and I'm away in a household with the FiOS 802.11G router 4 rooms away, so I can't judge the WiFi throughput. I did confirm that the system wakes up from sleep and connectes.

 

Another small issue is that the Wifi will go off (disconnect), but it won't even show up under the available connections (they all drop out) as if the adapter itself shut off. I thought maybe it's a power saving thing. Can't tell.

Same thing happens to the bluetooth. I'll hear a chime and then my devices get disconnected. They reappear after maybe 10 seconds.

 

What kind of static specifically?

 

Hello there,

It happened to me at the very first days after the purchase, Dell recognized it as DOA and agreed to replace it with the same model (11 3147) from the store it was bought without any questions. Unfortunately the replaced one model also had the same problem, so Dell sent technical support to make a clean installation of Windows & drivers but the problem wasn't resolved.

Dell recognized it again as DOA but this time i chose the replacement to be done by them because i suspected a batch problem (service tags were almost identical). I had to wait for about 20 days , but this time it seems that everything is fine. Of course i have some issues that have to do with pairing my bluetooth mouse (Dell wm524) but i think that this problem concerns Microsoft Windows 8.1 and not the hardware.

Needles to say, before i called Dell technical support i tried everything i could to resolve the problem but nothing worked.

 

I confirmed that SSD Samsung 850 Pro working perfectly with 3147 in AHCI mode