Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

I have had a few video driver crashes that brought down the system. We'll see what happens with the latest updates.

 

My Windows 10 upgrade went fine, no problems. Just the typical GPU driver crash, but that happens in XP+

 

I upgraded my M3800 from Windows 8.1 Pro > 10 Pro. Days later, Dell replaced a motherboard for me. Now I am having activation issue. Windows indicates that product key is blocked.

Also, my machine is shipped with Ubuntu. So I bought a Windows 8.1 Pro key myself.

For those people who are using the original Windows OS/image/driver that shipped with the machine, does your fan run at max speed for 3-5 seconds after every reboot (machine is not charging)? My fan will run at max speed for a few seconds about 1-2 minutes every time I power up my machine. I tried installing different intel HD graphic drivers, including the one provided by dell, but I am still having the same issue.

 

My fan does not start at all on boot or reboot, I'm using Windows 8.1 installation made by Dell with updated drivers.

 

Hey everyone, thanks for the invaluable information on this thread. I couldn't find this for myself earlier, so I'm sharing this for other people who have this same question. I've been running my Dell m3800 for the last 3 months with a 512GB SSD + 2TB 2.5" 5400rpm HDD. The included adapter for an HDD wouldn't fit a 9.5mm HDD (though it itself is 9.5mm tall), but I was able to use some velcro (made sure not to cover any ventilation holes) and was able to mount it in there. It is kind of a snug fit once you seal the bottom panel assembly, but the way i see it, if it's not really moving around when i shake the laptop (when it's off), I don't think it will do too much damage. I haven't had any SMART errors thus far either. I hope this helps someone else in my situation looking to do an SSD + 9.5mm thick 2.5" HDD combo in their m3800 or xps 15 9530.

 

Under Windows 10 Enterprise with almost all "drivers" (they are not all drivers, eh) from the Dell website installed (which weren't that many for Windows 10) (except from Dell Inventory Collector Application, Dell System Inventory Agent, Dell Command | Deploy Precision M3800 Win 10 Driver Pack), I still have 2 PCI Data Acquisition and Signal Processing Controller and 8 unknown devices showing up in he device manager. What's up with that? So far I don't see anything not working (e.g. Bluetooth, USB 3.0, SD-card reader, etc.).

 

Has anyone had problems with the right two USB ports not working and a loss of touchscreen functionality? I've been on Windows 10 up to now just fine but recently these things just stopped working. At a loss on what to do...

Device manager looks fine, no issues, just plugging anything into the right two USB ports yields no results and the touchscreen won't respond to my touches, despite being listed there as well.

Edit: Oh my god, I can't believe it. Reflashing the BIOS actually worked. Was NOT expecting that to work.

 

Heads up Synaptics has new Win10 drivers for their touchpads.
1) Two-finger right-click is improved even more (for me).
2) Two-finger scroll is about the same (erratic, not great).
3) Still no edge swipe gestures like the older drivers had (for Notifications / previously Charms or Task Switcher)... I guess it's not a feature people want.
4) One feature completely missing is the ability to make Right Button function just like Primary (I mean it's redundant since I prefer 2-finger click for right-click).

One thing I realized in using a new extremely cheap hybrid ($200 Acer One 10.1) is that its touchpad is light years better than our fancy M3800/XPS15. I mean, light years. MacBook good. And, it's settings are right in Win10 Settings window rather than a separate old-school popup like Synaptics/Dell. They show up in a section in of the Mouse and Touchpad Settings under "Precision Control..." which we don't have. Apparently it is a HID device (as opposed to our 30! year old PS/2 devices) was designed according to Microsoft specs. It's my understanding the XPS13 use these new devices. Hopefully we'll see these in more and more devices.

[Edit] Link: http://www.synaptics.com/en/drivers.php

[Edit] Making redundant right button function same as left (to mimic Mac touchpad) can be accomplished via registry setting HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Synaptics\SynTP\Touchpad...\ExButton4Action set to 1.

 

To follow this up, in case someone else is running into this issue. I was a little daft not realizing "Dell Command | Deploy Precision M3800 Win 10 Driver Pack" is all the drivers one needs for Windows 10 (the "Dell Command" made me think it's some kind of unnecessary piece of software from Dell). Turns out ALL those "PCI data acquisition and signal processing controllers" and "unknown devices" in the device manager are part of the "Intel dynamic platform and thermal framework". All ten of them. And that was it. Not that anything major has changed since I installed them now.

Cheers.

 

m3800 - really awesome laptop, but temperatures are quite high. The CPU constantly sits at ~ 68-72 degrees Celsius when not doing much (a few Visual Studio 2013 instances, SQL Explorer, Chome with 20-40 tabs). Anybody else noticing high temp issues?