Precision 7510 Owner's Thread

And there goes the Next Business Day promise of Dell. They just called me to cancel the appointment today for the rapair of the machine because there are no parts.

I called them again to ask for a refund. It is a no go. This means I'm looking at a week more with no working laptop! And with the prospect that the problems won't be fixed this is the worst service imaginable.

Do not buy this laptop whatever happens. Do not buy anything at Dell is my general advise.

 

All can't be same.

here I have dell Latitude and 3 years was going to complete for service.

I just called 3 days before for replacing DVD DR and HDD replacement.

They came 2nd day without fail and replaced with excellent service.

 

I sympathize with user goldme actually. Not being able to use the laptop in the meantime is a serious problem especially if you don't have a backup means of working. Definitely falls back on Dell to resolve the issue. If it is an OS or driver issue, then it is Dell Support to diagnose and supply a solution. If that solution is to contact Microsoft or other party, then I think it falls back on Dell to make it known. Hopefully the issues will be resolved soon and be final.

*regarding sleep mode, I use it heavily too for same reasons described by goldme. I have a couple VMs running concurrently, I can put them to sleep and shutdown the host. But I may also have a few dev projects in apps running on the host that I'm nose deep in. Is so much more convenient to save my work then just close the lid or put the system into sleep mode. Then I return later and pick up exactly where I left it. Regardless if sleep is used though, it should still work.

One question for goldme though, which support plan(s) did you purchase? I've had mostly excellent experience from Dell pro support for past 10 yrs or so. Waiting on parts I can understand, it is a new system afterall. I've experienced delays while waiting for parts to replace a quadro for example. But if this were my first experience with Dell support and I was unable to work using the brand new computer in the meantime , I would probably feel same as goldme is now.

 

I did not explicitly purchase a support plan but my purchase included a 3 years Next Business Day service. I think this is standard on business purchases. And it does sound as a good service until you get into a situation like mine. Broken machine and no parts and no option to refund. It leaves you with a very bitter taste. The money is gone so you as a customer cannot demand anything. You hope they fix this machine but you keep asking yourself what to do if it does not get resolved.

 

Yeah, hopefully when the tech arrives (whenever the parts arrive), it will be remedied. To be honest, I have had less than good experience with basic Dell support on a Dell consumer grade laptop we had few years ago. Basic support always seemed lackadaisical about actually helping. But in the end (display would intermittently go out depending on where the lid was tilted on the hinge), they came to my home and replaced the display assembly a couple days later with no problem.

It has been my experience, even with brand new Dell computer and with Pro support, they will rarely outright replace an entire computer right up front. First they do all they can to repair it. My old precision laptop from 2010 (when it was new at the time) they replaced the palm rest touch-pad assembly, daughter board, then mother board on three separate visits. Then, finally after 3rd or 4th visit/repair (this was all to fix a trackpad issue), they shipped to me an entirely new computer. *Someone used an analogy of a new car purchase and it breaking down on the road. Using that example, yes the dealership should fix it. but rarely would they ever replace the entire car.

 

Jumping in with the others, I will definitely be purchasing Pro Support on my next machine (if it is Dell). I got it for free on the M6700, and have had to put it to use a few times. Yeah, kind of sad that there were issues requiring parts replacement, but they gave me absolutely no hassle about doing the work, and I've never been on the phone with them for longer than 15 minutes.

Also agree that sleep should work. I used it all the time when I used to bring my laptop to work and back home every day. It is a pain to have to close everything and open it up again just to move the laptop to a different location, especially if you do VMs. You can try using Hibernate instead, slower to shut down / start up but might be more reliable (until you get this fixed). In Windows 10 you have to check a box to get the option to appear --- Power Options control panel, "Change what the power buttons do" (on left), scroll down to the bottom and enable the "Hibernate" checkbox.

 

Obviously if you stuff is so secret you are afraid what would happen if it got stolen, you should take proper measures to protect it, and that may include not using sleep/hibernate.

All of the attacks listed above require physical access to the machine. Myself, I do have my laptops encrypted but I understand that the probability of someone stealing it is minimal [especially the work one which spends almost all of its time in a locked/secure environment], the probability of that person knowing how to perform one of these attacks is even more minimal, and I don't live in a world where someone stealing my laptop will be the death of me. There are additional protections in place for the password manager and a couple of other sensitive things that would be actual serious trouble if they were stolen. The trade off of not being able to keep applications open when I need to move the laptop and a near-zero-probability theft-by-smart-hacker pushes me squarely into the "sleep mode is OK" camp. This might not be the same for everyone, which is fine.

Everyone has different use cases and priorities, bashing them for wanting to use sleep mode seems narrow-minded. Let's concentrate on how we can get this guy happy with his laptop for how he wants to use it instead.

[Edit] For context —
This post was in the middle of a bit of bickering in the thread, and those posts have since been deleted.

 

I have some ideas. First of all: new AMD FirePro graphic drivers directly from AMD website. Of course, after new Intel graphic drivers from Intel website.

Another one is operating system re-installation. It should be standard procedure after notebook purchasing. Often manufacturer-provided installation images are poor configured, out-of-dated, and full or unnecessary software.

If Goldme would like to give us some more details, maybe we can help him.

 

Already done. The AMD drivers crashed the machine on boot. I then went and disabled the firepro in the device manager of Windows. This did not solve the sleep problem but it did solve a few hard lockups the machine had when both GPU's were enabled. When you right click the mouse locks up and nothing works for a few seconds. Disabling the firepro "solved" those problems. But then I'm running on the integrated HD graphics with no firepro enabled. That is not OK with me.

I saw online that the Intel Management Engine Interface drivers version 11.x created sleep problems. So I look at my installed version: 11.0.0.1166. On the website it is 11.0.0.1167. So I downloaded those drivers and install them. After installation the version is still reported as 11.0.0.1166. So I call Dell support on why their own software is not updating the drivers. They said that it might be because the hardware is broken (they saw the maintenance call) and that that is why the driver is not updating to 1167. I find it weird that a certain driver is not updating because the hardware is broken. Seems a bogus claim to me but so be it. The machine is unusable anyway until next week.

 

Goldme, that's very bad of Dell not letting you return the unit. They gave me no problem at all when I returned mine. Not sure if the SSD issue you mentioned could cause most of ur issue.

Can anyone try to replicate the sleep and wakeup issue that goldme experience?

Hopefully, the hardware replacement will solve the issue. Seem like the real issue is Dell service and policy at your place and also the place where they receive your unit to ship to u. Best wishes.