XPS 17 9170 downgrade to windows 10?

This web page has a nice tutorial on downgrading. It is very simple and uses the media creation tool again from Windows 10.

Thanks. I also got some PM's from Dell. But when I tried to reply I got: You have reached the limit for number of private messages that you can send for now. Please try again later.

LOL - that makes no sense to me.

Hi, since we have not heard back from you, we will be temporarily closing this case. Feel free to drop us a note anytime, once you are available, and if you still need help. Take care and have a nice day!

I had a session with Dell support yesterday because my system would not boot into windows properly. At the end of the conversation, I ended up wiping my computer and refreshing it back to windows 10.  As of this moment, the system is running windows 10 and I’ve spent most of the last 12 waking hours working on getting this system back to the point where I can use it once again. Now I expect another 12+ hours to get things re-installed and re-configured.  2-3 days lost (not including the many frustrating and difficult days I've spent dealing with wakeup and hot bag issues in Windows 11.

Needless to say, I am very unhappy with this system. I doubt there's anything wrong the hardware. I’m convinced there’s many software problems and hoping that they were all related to windows 11. It is very likely a driver problem or a software issue that prevents the system from going into a real sleep so I can put it in my bag. The “modern sleep” idea seems to not account for people putting their laptop in computer bags. And despite that, the BIOS boot time is so long that the instant wake up doesn’t happen anyway. The whole architecture is broken and I had hoped it would be fixed in windows 11.

I’ll run this machine for some time on windows 10 and see how that goes. I see no good reason for anyone to upgrade to windows 11.

On a related note, I’ve been a computer professional for over 30 years. What I’m experiencing is not new. It totally feels like windows 11 was rushed to market as a ploy to get customers to upgrade their hardware. Unfortunately, I fell for that ploy and paid the price in time and frustration.

What confirms that is that there is no direct install to windows 11. This reminds me of all the prior releases of windows which also had this problem. You’d buy the product with the old OS and there was no convenient way to directly install a fresh copy of the latest OS. In my long experience, upgrading from the old to the new always has problems. And it’s also very clear that the testing of windows 11 has been reduced in favor of time-to-market. 

Furthermore, I’m convinced that all the overheating problems I’ve had in the past 6 months has reduced the lifetime of my computer. I’m very disappointed by that and sure that I will suffer the consequences of this after the warranty period (which ends in November).

Lastly, I can’t help thinking that none of the Apple (Mac) computers have anything like these problems. To be sure, they are not perfect. But every macbook I work on and the one I use from my employer wakes up reliably and has never tried to wake up when the lid is closed.

Update: after running windows 10 with minimum software added (virtually all MS software, office, etc) and ensuring that the system is up to date with both Dell and MS updates, System was unresponsive again this morning.

Looking at eventvwr, I see that Dell software decided to wake my system up and do something at 2am last night.  Not sure if this is related but it does seem worrisome that the system will decide to wake itself up. It could have been in my computer bag or on an airplane.

Scanned the logs. These clearly show that the system woke itself up due to Dell software.

What happened this morning is, I opened my laptop this morning and all seemed to go well but it had trouble recognizing me via the windows Hello (camera). I then used my fingerprint. The screen went blank. Then the system was in a mode where the keyboard lights would come on but the screen remained black no matter what I did (touchpad, keystroke or power button). I plugged in my power source thinking maybe it of power. This did not change the behavior. I then held the power button until it powered off and then was able to restart successfully.

As I indicated before, I thought this was a software problem and now I'm beginning to think it's related to Dell software.

I have a Support Request with Dell.  Unfortunately, the techs are not interested in diagnosing the problem but only interested in getting my system functional again.  This is why I'm posting here -- wishing that Dell would forward this on to development to look into the cause and not focus on getting the system running again.

The problems I've had have been persistent since I purchased this laptop 6 months ago. I regularly have hot bag issues where the system is either hot or has shut down due to thermal protection. I also have seen the logon behavior I saw this morning many times before.

When the system works, it's great and no complaints. But clearly there are problems with sleep/wakeup -- likely due to unanticipated driver failures.

It's been a couple of weeks now and the system is running very well regarding the problems I was seeing before. I've kept it on win10 and no Dell software for now.  I'm planning on upgrading to w11 at some point soon and I'll let you know how that goes.

Did the battery life last longer after you remove all the DELL software? 

I have just received my XPS 17 9720 and the battery is less than 3 hours despite I did not run any application. I guess because the fan keeps running, the battery drains fast.

Thanks a lot for all your shared information.

After uninstalling all Dell pre-installed apps on my laptop (I have used them to update the bios and driver before uninstalling). The battery life increases from less than 3 hours to more than 10 hours. (without opening any app, 70% brightness, battery balanced option, never turn off screen or sleep)

I don't know why DELL does not recognize the flaws of these utility apps.