XPS 8500 - Anyone successful with Windows 10 ?

I have an XPS 8500 and yes I had problems when doing the windows 10 upgrade. I ended up having to do a complete format and a fresh install. Made sure the boot partition was marked active, So far I have been running three weeks and no issues. We will see what happens? The fact that Dell has provided us with no support for windows 10 will make me and I hope many others consider carefully a purchase from Dell in the future. Too bad they just shot themselves in the foot again. This is poor customer support.

That's upsetting, how can they can support 8.1 but not 10?

I'm sure you can just get a different wireless card and a sound card so you won't need the realtek drivers.

Upgrading from Windows 8.1 to 10 worked fine, no wireless issues.

Clean installing Windows 10 however will make the wireless not work.

By the way, why are you forced to go back to Windows 7? I have an early 2012 XPS 8500 that came with 7 but later on upgraded it to 8.1 pro and dell still serviced me.

Better to have Microsoft support opposed to Dell support. Eventually Windows 7 will reach end of mainstream support and you'll be forced onto Windows 10.

Regarding the wireless card it'll be a driver issue. What hardware IDs do you have?

http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/checking-hardware-ids-in-the-device-manager/

Not home right now so I can't check the ID but I'm sure the early 2012 XPS 8500's wireless card is a dell wireless 1703 by atheros.

I was forced to move away from Windows 10, and to go back to the initial Windows 7 or to Windows 8.

I use 4 PC all running Windows 7 (HPs and Compaq); I will probably keep them as they are as long as they work fine.

I will just move to another PC vendor for my next PCs and equipment.

Sorry that Dell made the wrong choice!

I was forced to move away from Windows 10, and to go back to the initial Windows 7 or to Windows 8. I use 4 PC all running Windows 7 (HPs and Compaq); I will probably keep them as they are as long as they work fine. I will just move to another PC vendor for my next PCs and equipment. Sorry that Dell made the wrong choice!

Windows 10 should work fine on that model. It does on the XPS 8300 which is also unsupported. What issue did you have with Windows 10? What is your BIOS revision, graphics card and wireless card variant?

W10 on the 8500 is not supported or tested on it by Dell. Big deal? I can understand that, they are not selling it anymore. BTW, even if you have support they normally will NOT support the OS, just the h/w. My experience with Dell when you DO have a problem, be it s/w or h/w they usually will request you RE-INSTALL the original OS anyway. Understandably this is to rule out changes you or s/w you installed that might have made the problem occur. Still, that doesn't mean that W10 will not run or work properly, only that DELL has NOT tested it and therefore that OS is NOT supported on the 8500.

I'm on an 8700 myself, but my wife's on an 8500 and there is ABSOLUTELY NO problems running W10. She does NOT have the 1703 however. When we got the 8500 that 1/2 card would not connect to our N router at the 300Mbps speed. They replaced the card with an Intel one. I do NOT know if either of these will work in W10 as we had upgraded our router to AC speed and she's using a Netgear A6200 which does work in W10.

Oh, I've also got an XPS 435T Studio One, originally had Vista, then W7, then W8, and now W10. Again, Dell lists that machine and not supported or tested, but it works fine too.

I'd say call back support and ask WHY they wouldn't support the machine's h/w because you put W10 on it? Might get a different answer.

If you are having network problems, spend a few buys, USB N speed wireless adapters are cheap. $10.49 and up, ==>

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_p_n_feature_keywords_3?fst=as%3Aoff&rh=n%3A490499011%2Ck%3Ausb+wireless+n+adapter%2Cp_n_feature_keywords_four_browse-bin%3A7899510011&keywords=usb+wireless+n+adapter&ie=UTF8&qid=1442319165&rnid=7899506011

Dell lists computers that they have tested for upgradability and passed. I haven't seen a list of what had failed; this would be of use to some.

The majority of Dells sold in the last 10 years will upgrade. My 10 years old D9100 upgraded smoothly. It uses a P4 CPU that does support the NX disable bit. Not all P4s do.

My advice, based on my results, is to install the upgrade Without doing driver or BIOS updates. Especially DO NOT use the Dell Driver Update program. When done, manually update any drivers that are a problem. Win 10 will install any driver needed because of compatibility. In case of a non-workable upgrade, do a clean install over the upgrade; make sure your data is backed up.

I am using WIN 10 running on XPS 8500 with no problem, even after a GPU, PSU and SSD upgrade 2 years ago.

Good luck.

My XPS 8500 had no trouble in the Windows 8.1 to 10 upgrade.  Two issues I've noticed so far.

The Realtek audio now has an irritating problem:  When headphones are plugged into the headphone jack, the speakers do not automatically mute as was the case with Windows 8 and 8.1.  There may be a workaround that permits me to get back the old default, but I have not discovered it yet.

More worrisome is a problem with Windows 10's File Explorer:  It occasionally stops working. Think about that for a moment.  The user cannot navigate from one file directory to another to examine, delete, move, or open files.  This appears to be a common problem (do a Google search on "Windows 10 file explorer not responding").  None of the fixes suggested by Microsoft have so far worked for me.  Fortunately, the problem appears to be intermittent, though in a scary development I faced it again this morning after a fresh re-boot of the machine.  As some users have pointed out in the MS Windows support forum, this particular problem makes one's PC virtually useless.  The only fix some users report is to take the OS back to 8.1 or 7. 

When trying to learn whether Dell could point to drivers that may need updating, I saw the following notice:

Product not tested for Windows 10 upgrade

Dell is not testing or developing Windows 10 drivers for this product. If you choose to upgrade, some features, applications, and connected devices may not work as expected.

This was the first I heard that a relatively new, well-configured PC might not have clear sailing with Win 10.  Microsoft's own analysis of my PC reported that an upgrade to Win 10 was recommended, and I followed that advice.  Now, of course, I wonder whether I made the right decision.

My hope is that "Windows 10 file explorer not responding" will be fixed by a MS update to the OS.  In fact, I did not encounter the problem at all for the first three or four weeks of using Win 10.  It appeared for the first time shortly after the PC performed an automatic update of Win 10 components.

Try downloading a third party file manager program to use till MS fixes this issue. I have not seen this on any of my five machines.

Don't expect Dell, or any other OEM, to supply much in the way of driver updates. Dell DOES NOT write drivers, they come from the hardware manufacturers. MS includes mucho drivers in Win 10 to replace outdated drivers. In my five updates, I didn't need a single driver (or BIOS) update except for vidreo for my three real old machines., and this was due to the MS generic drivers not supporting all video resolutions.

If you have driver issues and Dell doesn't have a newer one, you should go to the hardware manufacturer's site to get one. Most drivers ARE NOT computer specific, as they are for the hardware, not the computer. For many years I used touchpad drivers from the Toshiba site, as theirs were much more comprehensive than Dell's rather stripped down pad drivers.

I have not been successful in installing Windows 10 on my XPS 8500. I keep getting a kernel_data_image_error. Several Microsoft technicians have also failed to install it. The last tech suggested doing a refresh to install it. I contacted Microsoft again to discuss the refresh/install process and this time the tech indicated that Dell has said they do not have Windows 10 drivers for the XPS 8500 yet and Windows 10 should not be installed on it. I will try to confirm this with Dell.

By the way, I, too, was able to install it on my XPS 8300 with spectacular results. My boot time to desktop dropped from 4 minutes to 35 seconds. Very happy with that one.

I have windows 10 running om my XPS 8500 2012 model. I tried the upgrade, had issues, created install media and formatted my drive and reinstalled. Been running for three weeks now without problems. Microsoft drivers worked fine for all my hardware. I7, 16 GB and PM830 SSD

Dell is currently not supporting and does not plan on supporting windows 10 upgrade as earlier posts mentioned. They have a message on thier support page when entering the tag #. 

I have a Dell XPS 8500 with the 1703 from Qualcomm Atheros. Tried upgrading to Windows 10 (from 8.1), and it worked fine - except the wireless network card. It did work from time to time - but then I lost internet connection (even if connected to my wireless network just fine). Sometimes disconnecting and reconnecting helped, sometimes it did not. Sometimes disabling and enabling the wireless network card worked - sometimes not. Sometimes a reboot helped also - and sometimes not. I know, I could probably just buy a new network card, but - moved back to Windows 8.1. I think dell should put in a little effort and get a driver for this network card - the machine is not that old.