Dell tech support useless, I need advice (S-XPS 1645)

Hello, I just bought a new 1645 to play Starcraft 2, but I am now decided to return it unless someone here has a solution for my issue. I'm pretty bad at computers, so I'll try to explain my problem the best I can.

My Studio XPS 1645 has sound issues and overall bad performance while gaming on SC2 Beta : scratching noises and distortion when I move the cursor or do anything, overall lagging and stuttering in the game, making it unplayable . I read online that the IDT drivers might be the cause. I had the latest IDT driver.

I read that uninstalling the IDT High Definition Codec and letting windows install a new one by itself could fix the problem. I did it and it worked at first. The sound was fixed and I could play for hours without any speed or performance issue. It was GREAT! But as soon as I rebooted the laptop, the same horrible problems surfaced again!!! The only way I could fix it again was to reinstall IDT and uninstall it again (repeating the process). But then it doesn't even work everytime. This weekend I haven't succeded once in making it playable. I am getting very frustrated.

I tried fixing IDT. I tried disabling the SRS feature through the registry as was shown in another thread : "A solution has been found. If you want to disable SRS Premium sound effects, change the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\IDT\Apo\LFX\Speaker1\plugins\SRS and D-WORD string "load" to 0. Viola!". It failed.

I tried turning off all enhancements in the driver properties. No effect.

I tried disabling STacSV64.exe because I read it was slowing down things. Nothing changed.

I talked to Dell tech support today. They tried downloading the latest BIOS and Drivers. Of course, it didn't change anything. They asked me if I was using a 130 W power cord. I am. Then they just suggested reinstalling Windows 7.

Is there a solution I missed? If nobody can help here, I'm not going to trust Dell with this piece of crap laptop that is supposedly "top of the line multimedia" and I will return it.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Miguel

 

I do feel like you should try reinstalling Windows if you're using the factory install. Back when I bought a D830 the factory install was buggy as heck with the crappy Nvidia Vista drivers and everything. A clean install pretty much solved all my software issues... and it gets rid of whatever bloatware you might have.

But if you've already done that and it didn't work, you might actually have a dud, and you probably should return it.

 

I haven't reinstalled Windows 7 because I didn't have the CD. They're sending it to me this week.

 

Yeah.. what he said

Return it if you still have issues

 

Why Dell stopped sending OS CDs is beyond me. I asked them about this and they said it was due to consumer feedback. Yeah right!

Check out this link
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/document?docid=370461#Issue1

People actually said "Why did you send me the OS CD. I would much prefer a restore facility to ensure I keep all the Dell software."

Sorry ... just a small vent as I have never heard of anything so stupid.

 

That was good for a laugh

Dell has managed to make the subject of the OS dvds very confusing. On
one hand they say they'll no longer ship them (and not saying anything
else) while on the other hand they offer OS dvds free for the asking (but
don't mention this fact anywhere). Then on some systems they say they
are available and on others they're not.

It's only because I've read hundreds of posts here lately that I've gotten a
pretty good idea of how things work at Dell. I feel sorry for the typical Dell
customer who has little idea of what they're dealing with.

Paul P

 

Yeah, from what I gather here, to say they are Kafka-esque would be an understatement.