A11 on Inspiron 1525 incompatible w/ Vista SP1?

Thanks to all of you on this thread,I have managed to sort this same problem out by changing the power management of the 1395.

My laptop is 8 days old...!

Any ideas why this only happened after sp1?

Thanks again

I too seemed to have solved the problem by disabling the Dell WLAN power setting.

I am at the end of my rope with Dell.  This is the third laptop in a row that has had some sort of fixable, yet nearly critical issue with power savings and management settings.  The first two were Inspiron 1520's.  The 1500 line has not been up to Dell's usual quality and reliability.  I have been very disappointed.

Pointing the finger at MS is not an excuse.  If the issue is known, and from the number posting here it clearly is, Dell should have a real solution by now.

My thanks to a great user community to figure out a workaround.

My message to Dell:  Shape up, or you're going to lose customers. 

AlexanderN--

I tried doing each individually.  I also went through each of the other approaches listed in this thread individually.  The only one that worked for me was disallowing windows to turn off the wireless card.

Others on here have claimed other fixes have worked.  My suspicion is that either there is a more fundamental problem here, or that the users that changed the bios to fix the problem never posted back when the problem returned.  For an hour or so, I thought replacing the BIOS with an older version worked, but it did not.

My symptoms were exactly as everyone else described.  Sleeping would work twice after I changed something, and on the third try would cause a reboot.

Out of curiosity, I checked to see if HP users were having the same problem.  They were, but HP quickly released a fix within days of SP1.  As far as I can tell, every Inspiron 1525 with the standard wireless card has this issue.  What is Dell waiting for?

Hi,

Wow amazing! This appears to have solved the problem for me.  

No messing around with BIOS etc. I just changed the power management settings on the Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN card to DISALLOW the computer to turn it off to save power (the wake option was disallowed by default). I have tried sleep/hibernate/shutdown and restart and it all seems to work fine. Hopefully this will be the end of it.

Thanks guys so much. Now I can go into sleep mode properly :smileyhappy:

Hi,
What a relief to find this community.

I have the same problem with the shutdown doing a restart on my Inspiron 1525 Vista SP1 Bios A11 (3 weeks old). As far as I recall I first noticed this after the SP1 update. I am using Dell recommended power settings.

I have found that it shuts down and hibernates properly if I manually turn off the wireless using the switch at the right hand side of the computer so I strongly suspect for me it may be an issue with the wireless.

I have two listed network adapters: 1395 WLAN Mini card and the Marvell Yukon 88E8040 Fast Ethernet controller. At present the power management options for both of these ALLOW the computer to turn them off to save power off this device but DISALLOW them to wake the computer. The driver for the Marvell Fast Ethernet controller was listed by Windows as a previous reason for slow shutdown. The latest driver (10.61.2.3) on the Marvell website http://www.marvell.com/drivers/ is very recent 20/05/2008 so I updated that (it seems not to affect the shutdown/reboot issue however). Should I change the power management options on both of these to DISALLOW power saving?

Dell: The laptop is great but this bug has been a real pain for me.

For me the fix worked perfectly for the shutdown/hibernate/sleep rebooting problem. I didn't experience random sleeping. Did your problems only start after SP1?

Agreed. Can you provide a link to where the problem was blamed on MS? I am assuming you are intimating that Dell is blaming MS for the problem.

This issue has been escalated for investigation to the proper engineering groups at Dell.

Many users on these forums and others across the web have reported the same issue.  Searching for this issue, I stumbled across several similar threads on this forum alone, most of which simply led nowhere.  Many have called technical support on this issue.  Many have been told by Dell tech support to reformat drives, update different things, or disable the Microsoft Hi-Def Audio Codec, etc.  In many cases, the finger is pointed at Microsoft when the actual solution is not known.  Clearly, this problem has not yet been given the attention it deserves.

What really bothers me is that this is a very obvious problem.  We're not talking about some subtle detail with odd components.  This is a generic wireless card and sleep mode.  Users couldn't operate their 1525 for more than a few hours before noticing it, and yet Dell still managed to allow this configuration into production.

I've spent the better part of a week trying to fix this problem.

I bought this laptop at Best Buy and they have ZERO support for it.

Dell needs to get a solution out there ASAP!

Otherwise, this is my last Dell and will be returned.  Back to Lenovo for me.

The shocking thing is that this is a HUGE PROBLEM with no answer.

SoapBox:

If you are experiencing this problem, PLEASE post in this forum.

Dell needs to know how huge a problem this is.

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You make it sound like that this is NOT a problem.

 

Disabling the wireless card function is a WORK AROUND...not a solution.  This should work out of the box.  Right?

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It might be a "work around" but you are not disabling the wireless card, just an option that is almost never used. Sure, it's a screw-up but I am willing to cut Dell a little slack on this. The "workaround" shouldn't dampen your enjoyment of the product in any way. You've already been told by Dell that they are aware of the problem and have elevated it. In the meantime, just unclick the option, enjoy your laptop and wait for the update that will probably be soon posted to their web site.

khisel :

You make it sound like that this is NOT a problem.

Disabling the wireless card function is a WORK AROUND...not a solution.  This should work out of the box.  Right?

Not every consumer can spend the time or feels comfortable in fixing the problem with this work around.

This is a clear and obvious problem.  How was it not detected during deployment of the product?

Again, for this product to go out retail (Best Buy) speaks to the level of Dells quality today.

Last, correct me if I am wrong, but didn't a customer figure out the work around an not Dell?  This problem has been known for a few months now with no fix.

Do I sound upset?  I am...along with many, many other customers.