Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

A few posts up i mentioned how pleased I am with my new M3800 HOWEVER those seem like famous last words now. Have spent several hours with tech support trying to solve 2 main problem. Everytime I shut the lid and re-open the power is off. Obviously not set that way. Has anyone else experienced this? Its not that it doesnt come back...the power is turned off. On top of that, it also had a problem freezing, so that the intro screen wouldnt go away on a restart ..had to do a hard shut down. Other main factor..in my device manager....several ..maybe 10 or more "unkown devices". How does that happen? I have 1 program and anti virus on the computer.

Any thoughts? Advice? Thanks..i feel a little embarassed singing the system's praises a little too soon...thankfully the tech support witnessed these problems when controlling my system too. Was it not for these problems...I would however say the system is great...just a little frustrating. Pity.

 

If your system is set to Sleep when you close the lid, Intel Rapid Start is probably taking it immediately to hibernation from there. Disable Rapid Start and that should stop happening.

Can't explain the unknown devices. If you go into their Details tabs and choose Hardware IDs, post their 4-character VID and PID. That might give a clue. I assume you're observing this even without any USB devices attached?

 

Sorry to hear the news. I get my system tomorrow and I'll test to compare our two "Canada" systems. Curious, what virus software are you using?

 

So, when you restart after that has happened, does the system boot normally, or does it resume from hibernation? If it boots normally, does it say something about an abnormal shutdown after you log in? You may want to check your event logs and see what messages are generated when you close the lid, and restart after that. Those should tell you exactly what the system did. Once we know what that is, we can go from there and try to figure out why it did what it did...

Hmm, now that is bad. Do you recall when that started to happen? Do you have a restore point from before that time that you can go back to? In any case, it means that all of a sudden your system cannot find and/or successfully install drivers for these devices anymore. This could be due to a hardware failure of these device(s), or a software issue. Again, Event Log is your friend. You should go there and see if the error messages in there give you a clue as to what we are dealing with.

Finally, given the overall seriousness of your issues, you could try and rebuild the system from scratch: Reinstall the OS and drivers, and see if that helps. If this is a Windows 8.x system, you can try and see if the Windows 8 recovery functionality can bring you back to a reasonable state of your system.

 

Wireless connection dropping -- without wading back through, can people say what they are doing if the wireless connection keeps dropping? The first couple of days were fine. Now the connection flakes out about every 10 minutes.

Related to that, does anyone know where the Win 7 drivers are?

thanks

Erin C-H

 

Win7 drivers are on support.dell.com. Just choose the M3800 (perhaps without entering a service tag) and when you click View All Drivers you should see an OS dropdown where you can choose Win7.

For Wifi issues, run driver version 16.6 or later and of course make sure your router's firmware is up to date. If you're already doing that, not sure what else to say. What router are you using?

 

This is not M3800 specific, but happening on devices featuring an Intel 7260 AC / N aswell. Probably due to incompatible router / outdated firmware / driver updates.

Might be a hardware or a software issue. To opt out a hardware issue, please reinstall Windows 8.1 from scratch, using the Recovery USB Stick, which was delivered with your M3800. Install all necessary drivers and report back. Alternatively, open up the Device Manager (Computer Right-click -> Properties -> Device-Manager), Right-click on the Unknown Device -> Properties -> Details (Tab) -> Hardware-IDs and Copy & Paste everything you see there. There should be something like "PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6798&SUBSYS_30001002&REV_00". This way, we can identify the missing drivers. In this example, I can see, that it is a PCI device with Vendor ID of 1002 (AMD), and Device ID of 6798 (HD7970) -> lacking graphics card drivers (for example).

I feel so sorry for you bro! I've went to a store and picked up a high-quality Torx T5 screwdriver for about 5€. They came off very easily - I've already unscrewed and screwed them about 4 times and they look like new - no scratches, nothing. Chances are high, that the "Pro" at the local store didn't choose the right size, which easily can lead to such damages. Can you post us some macro photos, so we can help you more precisely?

 

So my m3800 top tier was delivered today. I haven't had much time to play with it but first impressions are that this thing is beautiful. Crisp design, quality finishes and loaded up fast. I installed Win8.1 on arrival as well and that went smooth as well. A few minor annoyances thus far, keeping in mind I am picky, are it shipped with 2 tiny dead pixels, yes there is a cool whine and the metal lid was scuffed slightly. End of the world, no, but I noticed it. As for the dead pixels, I am unsure if I should complain or not. Coil whine, I will test more when I get home. It isn't totally quiet in the office so I can barely hear it. The scuffs are minor and the way I look at it, its like a new car, the first scuff you make kills you a little on the inside. I skipped this step I guess haha.

 

Have always relied on RealTemp for coretemp monitoring of Intel CPUs, also works for nVidia or AMD GPUs.
Tried MSI Afterburner for temp monitoring and framerate control, failed miserably at trying to work with a Quadro GPU

I've been dormant for awhile, have had this for 2 months and I'm pretty pleased. It's not a monster by any means, but it gets everything I wanted to get done.

AC 7260 chip has been glitchy as others have reported, just needs Intel to release better drivers. If I let it sit too long without connecting somewhere on the internet, it'll disconnect within ~10 minutes usually.

Have a little bit of coil whine sometimes when it's plugged in, only sometimes though, and it's not a problem as I usually have headphones in.

TRSS headphone jack is bit annoying, 3 pin headphones are wiggly and have a tendency to fall out just enough so they lose connection.

Touchscreen is amazingly useful for me, Metro works really well with it. Little bit inaccurate though, I'm having a hard time getting it perfectly calibrated.
I had around four dead pixels before, it seems two have gone away by now though.

Aesthetics are nice, but the finish is a little dinky. I got a really small dent in the top frame when I accidentally tapped it against a wood wall, I didn't know aluminum could be so soft until now. Soft touch finish on the bottom covering the carbon fiber can get scratched off easy if you're not careful. Soft touch on the palmrest is wonderful....but you need to maintain it so it looks nice. Trackpapd is surprisingly not much of an aesthetic problem for me, I just take a microfiber cloth to it once in awhile.

 

Working in a metal shop, I can tell you aluminum is quite soft. Barely a metal, almost.


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