Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

That's a thread on the XPS 15?

 

Which is basically the twin of the M3800, save for NFC and the GPU model.

 

As the post above said, they're virtually hardware-identical, and the Dell rep in that thread already mentioned a few times that this news applies to the XPS 13 and 15, as well as the M3800.

 

Follow up: the changing of the wifi-adapter did not solve my problem. The wifi card is still not recognized by the system.

However, the 7260 ac adapter that came with the system is rev. 2 but the one I have is rev. 1, could that cause some compability issues ?

 

The AC adapter should have no impact on the function of the system so long as it has sufficient power and is working correctly. I have never noticed a difference between my M4400 adapter (used with a plug converter purchased from Dell) and my M3800 adapters (I have two).

 

I mean the intel dualband wireless 7260 AC. Not the power/AC adapter.

 

So, shortly after you opened up your computer and tinkered with it, your M.2/NGFF slot isn't recognizing either of two WiFi cards? The likely cause seems pretty clear to me....

And no, I don't think the fact that your other WiFi card is an earlier rev matters at all. Lenovo has done things in the past like using non-standard pinouts on their slots and WiFi cards to prevent you from using other WiFi cards in their systems and vice versa, but I've never seen that on a Dell system. The only issue I've ever encountered there was trying to use various Intel WiFi cards on a Dell laptop (Studio 14z) that had an NVIDIA nForce motherboard chipset.

 

Yes, if the 'cause seems pretty clear' then tell me about it....

 

....

See the aforementioned "you opened up your computer and tinkered with it". However unlikely you may feel it is that you broke something while swapping drives around in there, it's even less likely that that timing is a coincidence.

But whatever the technical cause, I'm not sure what you're hoping to get from this forum on this issue. You already ruled out the card by testing another unit and ruled out the OS by testing Linux. The only other test would be testing those cards in another system equipped with an M.2 slot if you have access to one, but even without that test, it's pretty clear to me that something is up with ether the slot itself or something on the motherboard that connects that slot to the rest of the system, neither of which anyone on the forum would be able to help with.

 

One thing to check is the seating of the IO ribbon cable from the motherboard to the IO board; it's possible that it isn't damage, just a not-quite-completely seated cable. He'd have had to have removed it to add the mSATA card, and it's definitely a bit tricky. I think the WLAN card comes off of that..