Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Cool! Thanks for the help. I'll see if I have any more issues. Sadly I get the feeling these sort of configuration issues are the biggest issues with these machines. Once you have the setup down I bet they will be great (the base hardware certainly is).

 

Anyone having issues with their usb ports? Whenever I make a change to the system (aka add or remove software, system update, etc) and restart the system, all my USB ports stop working?!?!

When I go to restart the computer, it takes too long and I'm forced to hard restart...

Any ideas?

 

I'm confused, you're saying your USB ports stop working when you restart? Well assuming they start working again when your system boots back up, that's normal. Even with PowerShare enabled, there's a brief interruption in their power delivery during a reboot. If you're saying that every now and then when you restart your system your USB ports don't work at all after the reboot, that's definitely strange. If that's the case, how are you working around it now? Is it just a crapshoot whether your USB ports work when your system starts up? If you're on Win7, have you gotten the latest USB 3.0 drivers directly from Intel?

Long shutdown times on my system turned out to be because of my USB hard drive. It was sleeping at the time, but for some reason Windows feels the need to wake up all hard drives before shutting down or restarting -- which is ironic and irritating considering that my enclosure spins the drive down when it detects that the system has been powered off, so whenever I restart or shut down with my hard drive attached and asleep, I have to wait several seconds for it to wake up only to be turned right back off again.

 

When I download any type of update, add/remove programs, etc and windows suggest I restart, I do. After that restart, my USB ports don't work. To get around that, I either shut down or restart the system again. That restart or shutdown takes too long, and I am forced to hold the power button to do a hard power down. Upon the next boot up, the USB's work again. I have no USB devices hooked up except for a mouse and ethernet dongle.

I'll have a look at the USB drivers.

Thx!

 

Has anyone added another stick of RAM to their M3800? What brand/model did you install?

 

Fyi, Dell uses multiple memory suppliers, so what worked for someone else won't necessarily work for you. If you want to add more memory, use an app like CPU-Z to determine the specs of what you already have. Then when shopping for another module, it's a good idea to match the speed rating and CAS latency numbers, but you definitely have to match the voltage rating. If you can match the vendor as well, so much the better. All that said, I've had a very few cases where even after matching all of the above, the system wouldn't boot with the two sticks installed together even though it worked fine with either one on its own. But I've had far more cases where I could only match the voltage and maybe one or two of the other criteria and everything worked just fine.

 

I have a 1x8gb right now that came with the system. Use CPU-Z to get the specs of the current ram you have installed and just match those specs. I think any vendor should be fine. You can look for the OEM of the one you have in your machine, but it may be harder to find. I heard its better to get two matched sticks (sold in pairs), but I don't want to dish out the money to replace the one the system comes with.

The basic specs you are going to want to match are CL, Voltage, PC3-12800/DDR3-1600 (or whatever CPU-Z says it is under SPD and Max Bandwidth). All 3 of these specs will be known once you run CPU-Z. This may help you as well...
Computer memory upgrades for Dell Precision M3800 Laptop/Notebook from Crucial.com

 

I cannot get my iPhone to synch via the USB Ports on the laptop but can on the USB Hub... Apple has no idea what is going on.

 

Same with my ac340u at t beam. It doesn't work directly on my xps 15 9530 but works with a usb hub in between. Very troubling indeed.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

 

I'm about to buy a mSATA SSD. What do you recommend?
Help me choose between Crucial M550 or Samsung 840 EVO. Both 250Gb. Better idea?