Dell Studio 1555, *Part 2*

The previous Dell Studio 1555 thread was getting too large and slowing down forum search, so this is the new thread.

Original Link to Dell Studio 1555 thread

Remember to keep all comments/discussion related to the Dell Studio 1555.

Thanks!

 

I finally managed to get NFS: Shift demo working....its playable on 720p resolution (1280x720) on all medium settings. But its very very difficult to play on keyboard

 

No one answered before - so I will try this again; does anyone know if Dell has changed the batteries between the 1536/1537 and the 1555? I have found a 6-cell on e*bay for around $60 but it is for a 1537. My 1555 has a 9-cell but it makes the whole system a bit to large and heavy. TIA...

 

can someone tell me what bloatware programs are installed on studio 1555? I already went through all my updates and installed some new programs - so i don't want to reinstall vista to wipe it clean.

a list or programs i can delete would be great that are useless. thanks.

 

They are completely compatible. I'm using the 6 cell from my old 1535 in my 1555 right now.

 

Woot new thread!

I have 2 quick questions. So, I got this as a replacement for my Inspiron 1420, and it's been great so far (even if it is refurbished). But there have been two little things that have been bugging me.

1) I've been obsessing over the temperatures of the GPU ever since my old 8400 kept over heating. This ATI card is definitely more powerful, but it does get pretty hot while gaming (after five minutes it's idling in the mid 80s, sometimes jumps to mid 90s, hasn't reached 100 Celsius yet thank god). When I left mid game to get a drink, I came back to find that the system crashed and there were distorted colorful bars all over the screen with the sound stuttering. I couldn't find the temp at the time but I'm guessing this was due to overheating because after a reboot it was fine. Does this sound like a bad graphics card or is this normal?

2) I got my old Inspiron with an extended warranty (still has 500 something days left, even though Dell wanted me to ship it back to them when I got the Studio). Does the remaining warranty carry over to this Studio in case something breaks down? In other words, because this is a replacement (and not my original system), am I still running on my old Inspiron coverage? Or will I have to buy a new one for this Studio? I'd call Dell but I can barely understand all the accents ><

 

1) That's definitely not normal. I game on mine every night, sometimes for hours at a time and have not had any overheating crashes. Try getting a cooling pad, or undervolting if you haven't yet.

2) The warranty carries over to your replacement system.

 

How hot does yours get? I've read different things about undervolting the GPU as it apparently doesn't reduce heat output.

 

Undervolting the GPU? New one on me for this notebook. Undervolting the CPU, sure that happens

 

I was referring to undervolting the CPU, which can still have some effect on the GPU since they're on the same heatsink. Anyway, my GPU will reach 85C after an hour of TF2, so your temperatures don't seem too far out of whack.

 

I just lowered the graphic settings of some of the games and now the temps never reach anything past 87, so I guess that was an easy/weird fix *shrugs*

 

'Shroom - Thanks for your quick reply - I didn't see your response until this morning my time. I just took a chance with Flea-bay and ordered a 6-cell for $59. The 1555 has impressed me - I really like it. It runs so much faster than the H-P dv6z (which I returned). Battery life on the dv6 with an AMD processor was atrocious too.

 

Does anyone else's screen flicker black when waking up from sleep? Or when the pop up box comes on telling you to click "continue" when copying or installing something?

 

Yeah, its a side effect of the UAC in Vista/7 when it dims the screen. In Windows 7, you can turn it off.

 

Just installed Windows 7 and I have an unknown device in device manager called BASE SYSTEM DEVICE. I already updated all the drivers from dell's 1555 support page.. for instance my webcam and ricoh sd card reader drivers are installed.. what could this be?

 

Did you install the chipset driver?

 

I tried installing the inf update software but the only choices for operating system were windows 7 rc1 64 and vista 64.. I tried windows 7 rc1 64 but it said my system doesn't meet the requirements to install it.. should I try installing the vista 64 one?

 

I upgraded from dell 1397 wifi to intel 5300 last night.. pretty easy.. now I connect at 130Mbps
edit: on my non mimo single band 2.4GHz n router running dd-wrt

 

Hi there. I've search everywhere on this and was hoping I could get a few of you who have Vista still installed or better yet Windows 7 64bit. The other weird things is (as a computer tech) I've seen many of the newer Studio 15 and 17 models have this weird error show up in the Event Viewer logs. Is anyone else out there running a 64bit version of Vista or 7 have an ACPI error that displays once in a while on their 1555 or the 1745 models? It's just a weird coincidence that I happened to see this error on several of these that were recently shipped and was curious if others happened to notice. I'm almost tempted not to worry too much and thinking too that Dell is working on a BIOS upgrade to resolve this as they are usually pretty good at getting BIOS updates out to address these sort of things. Not to mention I'm not noticing any really use issues with the laptop such as crash etc. It so far has run quite well. Thanks!

 

You need to install the Ricoh chipset driver for the BASE SYSTEM DEVICE.

 

Nheimler thanks! That fixed it!
In response to your other question, I looked in my event viewer in the system log(I'm in win 7 64) and I did have an acpi warning. I heard that some people's 1555's are shipping with a newer bios than a06 so maybe it's already fixed. here's the error:
Log Name: System
Source: ACPI
Date: 10/10/2009 11:33:19 AM
Event ID: 13
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: uncolastudio
Description:
: The embedded controller (EC) did not respond within the specified timeout period. This may indicate that there is an error in the EC hardware or firmware or that the BIOS is accessing the EC incorrectly. You should check with your computer manufacturer for an upgraded BIOS. In some situations, this error may cause the computer to function incorrectly.

 

Thanks to you uncola for responding about the ACPI error. I guess at the moment I will not worry about it as I too heard somewhere in my searches (quite a few hours worth of searches) that there is an A07 BIOS out there. I just hope Dell is aware of the bug. And I'm assuming this due to some machines coming with the newer version.

As for the video drivers for Win7 that someone else is looking for I have a solution if you have yet to fix the issue. I was also able to fix the driver issue with the sound for the 1555 model. At least my tricks have seemed to work. Hopefully when I get some more time I can post my steps. The video driver was basically a mod to the INF file not using the mobility modders and the audio driver fix required a manual update via device manager with the 1557 model's drivers then installing the software afterwards. Blah...that prob doesn't make sense but as soon as I get some more time I will try to post the info.

 

I have received 21 ACPI errors since the beginning of the month: “The embedded controller (EC) did not respond within the specified timeout period. This may indicate that there is an error in the EC hardware or firmware or that the BIOS is accessing the EC incorrectly. You should check with your computer manufacturer for an upgraded BIOS. In some situations, this error may cause the computer to function incorrectly.” I have the A07 version of the BIOS. Linux also has problems with the ACPI that prevent most of the ACPI from functioning. You may see the bug report here: http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13689. I really hope that Dell know about this and that they will fix it in the next BIOS version.

 

Where are you guys getting the A07 BIOS from? The Studio 1555 download page is still on A06.

 

The notebook came with it .

 

I use the command line for my android phone using ADB to send commands to the phone via the android SDK, on my old acer i used to just go the folder that says Tools (under documents>android_sdk_1.>Tools) and then right click and it would bring up an option to open a command prompt here, so that basically when my command line came up it already had me navigated to the the tools folder (C:\justin\documents\android_sdk_1.5\tools) and i would just have to type in ADB Devices or Adb Logcat or whatever command I want to do.

However on the studio 1555 that runs vista (tho my dell is 64 bit) as did my acer and this option is not available when I right click on the file i wish to command prompt from, Is there a way to enable it to do that? or is that function something specific to Acer...

I dunno if I made it clear what I want, kinda hard to explain but if anyone could help me that would be great because now when I want to do android stuff I have to pull up the command prompt and type everything line by line in the there and the when I do 1 command, i have to retype the whole thing to do a second command.

It became alot more important since upgrading from a G1 to a mytouch 3g, the g1 had a physical keyboard and I could do all my command line work from the device its self but with the mytouch 3g I HAVE to use ADB/Command line

 

Try this link: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...mpt-to-the-windows-explorer-right-click-menu/. Should do the trick I think.

I've taken the easiest / quickest part from it and pasted below:

create a text file named anything.reg, and insert this text into it:

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\CommandPrompt]
@=”Command Prompt:”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\CommandPrompt\Command]
@=”cmd.exe /k cd %1″

Double click on that file, and the text will be entered into the registry, and you’ll have the same right click command prompt.

It works fine for me in Windows 7, so I would expect it to work fine in Vista. You do however have to right click on a folder / directory in order to make the prompt appear in the context menu; clicking on empty space or a file will not work.

 

The website is now featuring A07 BIOS for download.

The GPU, Touchpad and Chipset drivers are also updated..

 

^^ beat me to mentioning the new drivers/firmware.



Anyways...Peanut butter -> surprisingly effective in removing laptop sticker residue, made short work of what nail polish remover and dish detergent couldn't do.

 

The A07 still doesn't fix the ACPI error issues with Vista & Windows 7 64bit. I hope they fix this soon. I know many people getting this error in both the 1737 and the 1555 models. Every laptop of those two models I've seen all have this error.

 

I dont have any errors with A06 on 1555

 

nheimler - My 1555 is pretty new - and I'm running Vista 32. What kind of errors are being seen? TIA...

 

Hey, i've seen the new driver on dell's site, but how to upgrade them?
Is there a safe way to upgrade the bios and the chipset driver?
Thanks

 

That depends on what you consider safe.
The safest way is probably to leave it as it is
On a serious note, I've updated my machine yesterday with all available updates with no problems at all (running Windows 7 x64 RTM).

 

I meant if there is a "right" way to update chipset and bios, i know that leaving as it is is safer

If i just download the updated driver and the new bios from dell and i simply launch it...
is a good way to update or should i do it in a different way?

Thanks for the reply.

 

Well, considering there's no other way, you're good to go
If that's the only 2 things you're updating - go with BIOS first, than chipset.

 

In the Event Viewer logs is where you'd check for the errors I'm seeing as well as several other users. If you go to Custom Views then Administrative Events.

 

Thank you, i've updated Bios, Chipset and the audio software, seems like everything's ok for now.

Just a questions:are you able to open a MicroSD (inserted in a SDadapter) with the SD card reader??
My notebook doesn't recognize it

 

There is also the new SD card driver on the dell site, i updated it and now i can view my MicroSD using an SDadapter.Great!!

 

every couple of days i get 1 error. not really worried about it.

 

Can anyone tell me why so many advertise the 1555 specs for Ram as 4gb Max when it's 8gb Max? The older studios had this limit, the 1555 is the newest.

Its one reason I bought one.

 

hmm.. i upgraded my bios and sound card to the newest versions available and now my audio isnt working. it works fine in some programs like vlc and windows media player but it doesnt work for anything else. no windows sounds and no sounds in my browser. does anyone have the sound card driver for the previous version? the one thats on my recovery DVD is really old and doesnt have the SRS premium settings in the IDT audio program.

 

Make sure your audiocard is channeling your audio to the right place, "Speakers/Headphones", and not to "Independent Headphones". Make sure it set to default.

 

^yea its channeling correctly. the ATI HDMI output and independent headphones arent even enabled. the "speakers/headphones" are set to default and everything. i dont get why it works in some programs and not others though. i installed the older version of the driver and everything worked normally but like i said it didnt have the SRS premium settings. it also worked fine when i let windows automatically install the drivers but i like how the IDT program enhances the audio output.

 

Where can I find a free codec for Windows 7 that allows playback of Blu-rays in Windows Media Player/Centre? Can't find the software on the Dell downloads page.

 

Thats something I don't quite understand either. Could you list off a few programs where it IS working and a few where it ISN'T? Also, make sure that some of them aren't muted in the Mixer. Vista and 7 let you adjust the volume of individual programs.

 

not sure about others but my 1555 is running great! Got it refurbished earlier this month.

Went to DELL.com and updated the drivers they had on there.

Haven't done too much beside use internet and install Photoshop and Illustrator (not done much graphic work yet though.)

So far running good with Wireless at home.

Only fault I see is it takes a long time to Boot up. Also, the screen flickers black sometimes when i got to install something and a pop up comes up saying "do i want to continue."

 

i finally got it to install the newest driver correctly but now the problem is that the IDT software doesnt load. when i restart my computer or try to run it from control panel the application just crashes. i guess i shouldnt have messed with something that wasnt broken in the first place.

 

Is there any error message?

 

See now for studio 15, dell india is also featuring: (so happy for latest config)

Processor:
Intel® Core™ i7-720QM processor (1.6GHz, 6MB Cache) [Included in Price]
Intel® Core™ i7-820QM processor (1.73GHz, 8MB Cache) [add Rs.21,431.52]

Memory:
4GB Dual-channel 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM (2 x 2GB)

Hard Drive :
500GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive [Included in Price]
500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive [add Rs.1,017.45]

(note: sorry if anything wrong in my post, this is my 1st post)