Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

I agree.

Yes, there is no doubt that phone activation must work. Nathand probably had the bad luck of running into some clueless reps that don't know anything beyond their teleprompters.

P.S.: Reading Nathand's post again it looks like indeed he has never tried to activate over the phone. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like all he ever tried is get the activation key he extracted from the original install to work. I would not be too surprised if this didn't work, but the normal phone activation will work.

 

I know, but that's how it is apparently. I used the retail ISO, but according to Microsoft the retail and OEM ISO's actually include all of the different versions (for W7, at least) and so it doesn't matter which disk you use. I verified this by opening the ISO I used and, sure enough, it has folders in it for each of the different W7 versions.

Yes, I used a utility to find the product key and that's what I've been trying to activate Windows with. You don't have to enter the product key when installing Windows (IIRC), you just have to activate it within a certain number of days.

The phone activation method doesn't show up in the activation window. It just isn't there. I even tried a hack a found on another forum where I got the phone activation digits (9 groups of 6 digits) from a file deep within the system folder, found the phone number to call, and tried activating, but it said something about it being invalid.

As I mentioned, the phone activation option doesn't exist for some reason. Microsoft support had me try a bunch of different things, but nothing worked. It simply won't activate.


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I chatted with Dell and they said that they will send me the disk that I need to install Windows 7. Just a few minutes ago, I received this email in response to a question I had sent them earlier regarding the lack of a COA sticker on the laptop or documentation:

I don't understand what's going on here at all (I've installed Windows dozens of times from 98 to W7, done phone activation's, etc., and never had an issue like this), but from the Dell rep's email it sounds like the Windows 7 DVD they're sending me is different then a "normal" retail or OEM ISO that's available from Microsoft online. When I talked with Dell (before this email) previously, the rep had said that the disk they're sending me automatically activates Windows (he said I won't need to enter the product key or go through any activation steps).

 

I think I've seen one of those disks - they're pretty handy if you can also modify the eligibility tables in older Dell machines.

 

They are a type of volume license installation called SLP. It pulls your product key from the bios, and activates automatically once you connect to the internet. Think of the OEM version as more of something like white box builders will use, like Sager for instance.

 

I was referring to the whine noise. I am asking if changing motherboard could fix that.

 

On my 3800 the D drive, which has documents, photos and music, keeps disappearing. Everything is current, even intel chipset stuff. I disabled the intel rapid storage software as I read that could cause it. The usb ports as well, seem to be really finicky - i can place the wireless mouse transmitter in some usb ports, but not others. The device manager list is clean. I have run the dell diags for hours and it is fine, although once the d drive disappeared in the middle of a test. That was before I disabled intel rapid storage software. I spent almost a day yesterday doing all this, and this morning the drive is missing again!

I am thinking of sending this laptop back and getting something else. What do you think, or am I missing something obvious?

 

I'm having trouble with my M3800 as well, but I'm trying to reserve judgement until I get the Win7 disk dell is sending me (I tried doing a fresh install with a retail disk).

Software issues I'm having include:

* no USB ports working on some startups (happens maybe 1 in 6 startups -- if I go to device manager it shows warning icons for the USB devices and says something about a hub not being installed)
* trackpad going nuts sometimes (cursor jumping everywhere, becomes completely unusable for a while, windows mysteriously lose focus when I'm scrolling quite often)
* Windows freezes on the blue shutting down screen (this has happened quite a few times -- I've let it sit for almost half an hour before, but I keep having to crash it..)
* On waking up from sleep, the cursor is the rotating wait icon and nothing is clickable (I have to use ctrl+alt+delete to restart the computer)

 

Hmm, those are bad news. Did you see this behavior with the original installation you had as well? You are right, of course, to wait until you have a proper Windows installation going, but the above doesn't bode well. My money is on hardware issues at this point.

More generally speaking, the number of problem reports we see on this machine, given how few of them have actually shipped, is disturbing. Looks like there's some serious QC issues, and not just with the screens, but motherboards as well.

 

Have you checked that the drive is firmly seated?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

This sounds very similar to my problems too! I also turned off hibernate and sleep since I read about possible problems there too. I did open up the laptop and made sure everything, especially drive d, are ok. I did move pics, music and docs to drive d, thanks alex.

Did someone tell you to install Win 7 fresh?