Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

So my M3800 got delivered with Windows 7 Professional installed, and a USB thumb drive called "Windows 8 Recovery Media" with exactly zero instructions on how to restore the Windows 8.1 image from the backup "media". Tried as I might, I finally decided that the USB thumb drive really isn't "Recovery Media" at all, but rather it is actually the Windows 8.1 "Installation Media". So I successfully upgraded the system to Windows 8.1, but I had to manually download and install every single one of the drivers from Dell's website. It would have been nicer if they would have just let us choose which OS we wanted during the ordering process.

 

WiFi and BT exist on the same card, but they have separate drivers. If you only installed 16.6, you only upgraded the WiFi driver. The Bluetooth drivers are on a 3.x track.

On this page (after filtering for Win 8.1), the Bluetooth driver is listed first, then the separate WiFi driver: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Se...AC+7260&ProdId=3714&LineId=1784&FamilyId=1783

 

Is there any good news in this thread?

 

Thank you for that. I was confused when I saw too many files listed, and just picked the one that looked similar than the version that I was using. I have downloaded and installed the BT driver as well. Hopefully this issue won't return.

 

This is a known issue and will likely require an update to the Intel GPU driver since even when the NVIDIA GPU is engaged, the Intel GPU is involved to output the rendered graphics to the actual display(s). Unfortunately the Intel reference drivers don't install on this system, so we'll need to wait for Dell to post an update on their Support site.

 

Thanks. I hope this gets fixed.

I would think you should connect the motherboard end cable of the cable last once everything else is attached and connected... I'd hope the connector is sturdier than it looks/feels, but I'd worry about putting more strain/pull on it than necessary. You should be OK reconnecting the drive end of the cable in either order -- it's a standard SATA+Power connector.

 

Crossing my fingers didn't work, as the problem returned! Got Dell Precision Tech Support on the phone, and per his advice, I've disabled the USB Ready Share in the BIOS. So far, so good after 2 hours. Crossing toes this time!

 

I assume you mean Power Share? That's a bummer if disabling that is the fix, because that's a great feature. I'd also actually be surprised if that solves the issue seeing as Power Share only comes into play when the system is asleep or powered off.

 

Yes, it must have been Power Share that we disabled. We'll see where this issue ends up.

 

Not sure if this is a Win8.1 issue, specific to this model, or something that can be fixed with a driver update but multi-monitor is a little quirky. I have a second monitor at a much lower resolution that the QHD (1280x1024 to be exact).

If I plug in the second monitor I need to log out then log back in for the scaling to be correct on it. Then, the scaling of the desktop icons and taskbar on the QHD is very tiny. Most apps work great though and dragging windows back and forth performs the variable scaling correctly.

I'm wondering if this is an issue of how the 'extended desktop' is implemented. It's as if it can only apply one scale to a window or app instance as a whole. I bet this also has something to do with photoshop's problems, perhaps it has a big invisible window everything else sits in.

Edit: Noticed an interesting thing about photoshop, if I start it on my 1280x1024 monitor, then drag it to my QHD display, it looks perfectly fine!