XPS 8700 Windows 8.1 Dell BT/WIFI issues

Thank you, CHUCKO6166 !

I will try it myself. 

It is not clear whose fault, so I do not think either Microsoft or Dell are going to fix it.  I am more than happy to use Microsoft generic drivers instead, if they are available. 

Regards,

Chucko6166,

Where did you find Dell BT/WIFI drivers for Win 8.1. I only find drivers for Win 8.0

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/Product/xps-8700

Regards,

The direct link for the Win 8.1 drivers has been posted a few times in this thread.

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/DriverDetails/Product/xps-8700?driverId=P84MY&osCode=WB64A&fileId=3290056386&languageCode=EN&categoryId=NI

Thank you, Prius2004. 

I believe all drivers should be in one official location. Dell should definitely fix this one.

Regards,

I repeated steps suggested by chucko6166 and everything worked. Except my Bluetooth in device manager shows: "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)"

Any manual solutions for it. I do not actually use Bluetooth that often, so it is not a big deal, but would be nice to fix.

By the way, reboot is now okay.

The long shutdown/reboot problem is apparently caused by the BT drivers or something in the BT driver suite.  I've done a bit more work on this and below are my findings.

The most recent Win 8.1 BT/WIFI driver package currently available from Dell: 

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/DriverDetails?driverId=P84MY#

You'll want to download this file from the two files offered:  

XPS-8700_Network_Driver_P84MY_WN_10.0.0.260_A00.EXE

When you install this driver suite it will install the following drivers;

BT: 8.0.1.241

WIFI: 10.0.0.260

and the long shutdown/reboot problem appears to be caused by the .241 BT drivers.

I've found newer BT drivers:

http://www.station-drivers.com/download/qualcomm/qualcomm_bluetooth_8.0.1.312-x64(www.station-drivers.com).zip

and these are supposedly WHQL drivers, version 8.0.1.312.  The www.station-drivers.com site is in French and on the surface may seem a bit dicey but the site has been around for a long time and I've used it as a source of updated and pre-release drivers when troubleshooting problems like this one.

Anyway, on my Win 8.1 test systems, If I uninstall the Dell BT/WIFI driver suite package from Control Panel, Programs and Features and the BT/WIFI devices from Device Manager and then reboot, Win 8.1 installs the following generic driver versions:

BT:      1.0.3.0       Date:  5/8/12

WIFI:   3.0.1.155   Date:  5/3/13

Note - If you uninstall the Dell driver suite package and still see the 8.0.1.241 BT drivers installed in Device Manager, you can uninstall the BT device again and click the box that says "remove the drivers for this device".  Then on reboot you should see the generic BT device driver 1.0.3.0.

So how do we fix the Win 8.1 long reboot problem and still use up to date drivers?  (Use at your own risk as part of what I'm suggesting below uses non Dell supplied drivers).

Fully uninstall any existing Dell BT/WIFI driver packages and uninstall the BT and WIFI devices in device manager and reboot.  You should see the generic drivers automatically installed in the versions that I've listed above or you may see the devices listed with error messages regarding no device drivers loaded for these devices.

Download the Dell Win 8.1 driver package from the link above, making sure that you download the file name listed - it is the "Update package for Microsoft Windows".   Double click on it to install, but during the install process stop at the screen where prompted to install the BT and WIFI drivers and uncheck the box to install the BT drivers, let the driver install complete, just installing the WIFI drivers only.  Reboot when complete.

Then download the BT drivers from the station-drivers link above, unzip the file, and double click on the Bluetooth_Suite_64.exe to install.  It will take a few minutes to complete, so be patient.  Reboot when complete.

After reboot, you'll see that by installing the WIFI portion of the Dell suite you have WIFI drivers 10.0.0.260 and by installing the Qualcomm drivers from the Station-drivers.com link you'll have BT Driver suite version 8.0.1.312.  You'll also have two listings in Program and Features, one for the Dell driver suite and the other for the Qualcomm BT driver suite, should you need to uninstall either package. 

The end result is that the long reboot/shutdown problem is solved and you have up to date BT/WIFI drivers on your Win 8.1 XPS 8700 system. I tested the BT with my Android phone and everything seems to work, including the BT audio.

Enjoy,

Chucko

PS- I'm hopeful that Dell will release an updated driver package soon - use the above only if needed, and be sure to uninstall both packages before installing an updated package from Dell.

Do you want Dell to dictate to Microsoft what they should or should not push in their Windows Updates?

No reasonable Dell customer expects Dell to dictate anything to Microsoft. However, I believe most reasonable Dell customers expect Dell to keep the driver packages for the systems it sells up to date.

The BT driver on Dell's web site for the XPS 8700 running Win 8.1 is v8.0.1.232, dated July, 2013, which can easily get updated to the version that causes issues (v8.0.1.241).

The latest Qualcomm Atheros BT driver is v8.0.1.314, dated January, 2014. Is it asking too much of Dell to keep drivers for its systems current?

I also have an XPS 8500 and I also upgraded it to Windows 8.1 Pro 64 bit.  I installed the Dell drivers from Dell's XPS 8500 support site and I also experienced severe delays when shutting down or restarting the computer.

This weekend I took time to rebuild my PC as I thought I deleted something or corrupted something in error, after installing the Dell WLAN / Bluetooth driver the system started freezing on shutdown or restart.

I eventually found this forum and am surprised there are so many people with the same problem.

Having followed the advise above from chucko6166 I can confirm the Bluetooth drivers from Dell's support site are definitely causing the lockup on shutdown or restart. Following chucko6166's advise to install the WLAN driver from the Dell update and then the secondary Bluetooth driver from driver station the lockup is now gone when shutting down or restarting.

In the device manager however there are two Bluetooth peripherals under Other devices but they have no driver. They can't be deleted, what are they for?

Chris,

My XPS 8500 is still under warranty, I expect Dell to be providing fully working and tested drivers on their website, given this thread exists, this is clearly not the case. As you are aware this is a Dell specific driver, see under the Control Panel, Add / Remove programs it states 'Dell WLAN and Bluetooth Client Installation' 

Please advise when will Dell be making available a Windows 8.1 64 bit driver, which installs correctly without causing the system to freeze on shutdown / restart?

Many thanks,

Crawford

Yet another confirmation that the advice from chucko6166 solves the problem. In my case, it was for a Dell XPS 8500. Read all of the details. They are exactly correct, including the weird side effects that occur when doing things in a certain order. However, each work-around describes the correct way out the mess.

I chose to leave the generic BT driver (I don't use it) and reinstall just the latest Dell WIFI drivers. I now have no delays during shutdown or reboot. If you have an XPS 8500, use the Dell driver download for the 8500. The link from chucko6166 is for an 8700.

Loaded a new client 8700 this weekend using MS 8.1 ISO disk onto Samsung 840 Pro.  Have all the same slowdown issues, not shutting off, stalling on restart, etc. Using Dell's most current driver set only.  Trying to uninstall the driver hangs the PC.  I noticed the issue after updating to A6 BIOS.  So it may be not be just a driver vs Win8.1 issue, but also related to the BIOS update, which hung as well trying to update the Intel ME, but did not affect re-boot and machine operation.

I have finally managed to remover the BT "suite" and driver, which then let it revert back to the 20012 working one.  Also MS updates also did an update to the same driver as I was patching the PC, so you need to watch out for that as well until this issue is fully debugged.

SKK

Thanks Chuck!  These are great instructions...I even saw that you posted on Microsoft site as well.  Very helpful!!

I have one more question though...I followed your isntructions and have successfully installed the WiFi driver (after de-selecting bluetooth from the options in the install).  I then proceeded to install the newer Qualcomm driver, as suggested, but it will not install because it thinks there is already an installation of the Qualcomm driver.  And when I look in Add/Remove Programs, sure enough, Qualcomm is listed there and I do not have an option to Uninstall it.  I tried uninstalling through Device Manager, but it will not remove it from the Add/Remove Programs list.  So, I am kind of stuck not being able to install the Qualcomm driver.  I hope this makes sense.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  I mean, I can just do another clean install of Win 8.1 Pro....that's not a problem.  But, it will take a few hours to re-download Battlefield 4 again.  LOL

Thanks!!

I've not run into this problem with any of my test systems.  It has been my experience that is something is listed in Win 7/8/8.1 Control Panel, Programs and Features, you should be able to uninstall it by right clicking or double clicking on the entry and select uninstall.

However, it can happen if something gets broken.  The fallback procedure that I use when something won't uninstall on any OS is to reinstall the exact version of the software that is already there and many times that will fix what is broken and then allow you to uninstall the offending package from Programs and Features.

So you may need to download and install the package from Dell that is the one that causes the problem in the first place.  Doing so should not hurt anything and I've done it 10 or more times on my Win8.1 test systems.

More info can be found in the threads listed below, with some suggestions on where to go from here.  The first thread references Win 7, but 7 and 8 use essentially the same install/uninstall routines and registry environment, so the steps to mitigate the problem should be similar.

http://superuser.com/questions/401511/how-to-remove-a-broken-program-from-the-programs-and-features-list-in-windows-7

I'd suggest starting with this fixit from Microsoft first:

http://support.microsoft.com/mats/program_install_and_uninstall

Then look here:

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/p/20515771/reply.aspx

If none of this works then reply here and I'll look at things in more detail.

I've been reading these threads about BT/WIFI etc. and the slow restarts, and this fix I was given was not mention, I don't think. It was so easy. I called Support (in India, of course), and the rep accessed my screen, rolled-back the BT driver and all is fine now, normal restarts and shutdowns. Took all of 2-minutes. This, I am told, is only related to the upgrade from 8.0 to 8.1 and the BT driver; not on the preinstalled 8.1 machines now being sold. So there ya go. All is fine now. Roll-back your driver if you upgraded and have the slow restarts, etc.

Having the same problem with a Dell XPS 8500 i5.

When the Dell Wireless 1703 Bluetooth device is disabled in the Device Manager, Windows 8.1 shuts down and powers down.

Driver is 8.0.1.243 (7/31/2013).

Has Dell provided a working driver for this system yet?