Drivers Out-of-Date! Dell 17R 7720 Premature Release for Windows 8

Question

I look at the posts for my 17R 7720 with various problems that potentially render the computer either unusable or very vulnerable to future failure and it is obvious this computer was released prematurely. People are complaining about not being able to make Recovery Disks (me included),  Numerous Sleep and Hibernation problems (me included), and BIOS (ver. A11) incompatibility with W8 (blue screen crashes upon F2 exit, every time, me included!).  Obviously Dell tried to get the W8 version out before Christmas buying season without proper testing. Dell should have left this model  as W7 until  the system was stable and properly tested. Unbelievably, the Dell site has drivers for my computer that are older than the ones delivered!   I bought it Nov 20, 2012 (at least the install driver software  warned me on the very last step of installation). More frustrating is the lack of access to a real person for support or even any word on what is being done or what symptoms are known problems.  Likely Dell support staff are very  overwhelmed as well due to the lack of testing causing the deluge of complaints with W8 release! Dell has no appreciation of the wasted man hours a user puts in trying to fix a brand new computer that actually can not be fixed because drivers and BIOS are incompatible with Windows 8 and has not been tested thoroughly.  It takes some pain and 'trial and error' to figure this out. Would I have bought this computer knowing this trouble at the time of purchase?  Not likely! Many people use computers as a tool in their workplace - problem is there would be no time left for productive work! Many large corporations will not adopt the latest OS for this very reason and many are still on W XP.   Luckily I am a retired EE. My question are: 1) When is Dell going to update the drivers site to reflect the delivered latest drivers?  I put in my Service Tag and I get the older ones, when I click on the 'delivered original drivers',  I get a message that the process failed even though my service tag initially takes  me to the 17R SE  7720  with the completely out of date drivers?  Any other users getting this? 2) Are other users having timed sleep problems where sleep(set at 10 minutes say) only happens automatically once in say 8 times? The ADVANCED OPTIONS are correct or timed sleep  would not happen at all. I believe the problem is in the BIOS as my belief is that W8 power options   driver is not  processing all RTC interrupts at the designated time. I am also guessing the RTC driver is part of the BIOS since an RTC driver is never mentioned.  The fact that BIOS gives a blue screen critical crash after an F2 BIOS look around (nothing saved) and then exit. The  exit crashes the subsequent  W8 start-up which tells me this was not tested much! With the lack of support from Dell, I am too worried to go back to A08 now that my system is mostly usable. I am impressed with the speed and excellent hardware in this computer. 3)Can Dell not support my brand new computer by having tested and up-to-date driver support????  Merry Christmas and have a STRONG eggnog!        UPDATE 1-Jan-2013:   Well I see someone at Dell finally fixed the download drivers site. I had finally figured it out myself. Dell in their haste downloaded the latest version and the Previous Versions all on the same date of 12-10-22.  The problem was the site software took the two identical dates down to the minute of the day when  the 9.0.3.1021 version was loaded first by the software engineers and it incorrectly became then Previous Version by default.  So I looked at the Previous Version and low and behold I found the correct Ver. 9.03.1021. I had not overwritten it on my 17R but at least I have more confidence in the Dell site. Today I notice someone finally fixed it! Thanks for listening even if no one replies to my concerns above. I was so paranoid about Dell support I had already bought a 2nd 1TB HDD and cloned it so I had a good backup!

090909 · Answer

** just bumping this thread ** BTW the MANUALS for the 7720 are all messed up, as well ( see the manual downloads page) Do we even get a paper manual with the machine (I'm doubting it...)

Bill Alsip · Answer

There are no paper manuals and the online manuals are mainly hardware which I am grateful for the detail . A proper online manual for some of the disk recovery procedures (like the old days) would have been nice and especially an exact description of how complete ( wrt losing user programs and files ) Recovery Media and Rescue disk is in recovering the software when things go wrong.

I found the Create / Restore function with Windows 8 is the most time saving since you go back exactly where you were if you happen to bungle a driver or mess the registry without going too far backwards. Just make sure you Manually Create a Restore point just before you do anything risky like go to the Intel site to get later drivers directly. Win 8 does not do enough Restore points and seems to have limited space before rolling over the old ones.

Believe it or not every 17R 7720 has a defective WiDi driver as the Device Driver will tell you "not functioning" or words to that effect. Intel has a 240 MB driver that fixes it right up but be careful to not update the Intel Chipset drivers that may require BIOS updates. Do it on the Dell site. Ask me how I know, I had to do a Restore and it took 2 hours of disk grinding.

File system integrity can be checked and fixed with "sfc /scannow" in "cmd window with Admin privileges" - just Google the command to learn about it before using it.

I do have my computer looking pretty good now with a desktop looking much like a Win 7 since Win 8 is so deficient for a non-touch laptop like this! Just add Classic Shell for the Start button and Gadgets 8 for the gadgets that are missing and remember this keystroke: Win + x gives a pop-up access menu for all useful almost ALL system procedures. I can not figure out why Microsoft deleted Start and gadgets except to promote mobile touch devices and get laptop/desktop users mad.

Dell did an excellent job on the hardware but software, documentation and software support are lacking. You can not touch a 17 inch 1080P laptop with the equivalent advanced hardware features for the money. But, I have never spent so much time getting a computer to be useful. There has been a real lack of testing in order to get to market for Christmas buying season. Lots of customers will be doing Day Zero rescues that lose everything and get very frustrated at the time burned up. I have a cloned 1TB 2.5 inch HD on my dresser now just in case which I made using a USB enclosure and I swapped drives ( in & out) to test it. Would have like to boot up directly on the USB drive with an F12 but no go, so out came the screwdriver. All the inside of the plastic case is like a Faraday shield to prevent EMI problems and probably pass FCC in the microwave region. Top notch. 128 GB STATA 3 SSD drive in 2nd bay is next for speed! The OS will be SSD and user files on 1TB HD.

The only remaining issue I have now is that the timed Sleep in Power Configuration only works one in five times. I have to manually Sleep it when I leave the computer. I may go into the CMD window with powercfg.exe ? and try some commands to interrogate it but I would be poking in the dark and I need a rest from this thing.

docj9000 · Answer

Have you tried directly going to the Intel driver update utility website?  I installed some new drivers for my new Inspiron that are still not available on the Dell support site.  Just Google 'intel driver update utility'.  Be sure to use Internet Explorer because the site requires Active X.

Bill Alsip · Answer

In the third paragraph above, you will see  I already tried that but my experience is that only the WiDi  is worth it.  Possibly the Chipset driver for the motherboard would fix my timed sleep problem but I will wait for Dell as it is too time consuming to experiment and Restore for such a small problem.  It is very time consuming to make one system change and then make sure all the essentials in Win 8 are still working.  Usually it surprises me with a problem appearing in one particular application a day later and I have a hard time tracking down the cause due to multiple changes this early with a new computer.

Bill Alsip · Answer

Slog away and Google the problem symptoms and up comes the solution for "no automated Sleep".

Ran powercfg -energy in CMD mode with Administrative Privileges and srvnet driver identified as preventing sleep

now Google "srvnet preventing sleep"

and out comes the solution:

"powercfg -requestsoverride \FileSystem\srvnet"

problem solved. I think srvnet is something to do with WiFi communications traffic but not positive.

Good riddance to that problem and thankyou Google! Microsoft could have a more user friendly Power Configuration user interface.

By the way, the above is a very common problem and possibly due to a install of a WiFi networking program.

I think this computer is running excellent now!. I put my spare cloned WD 1TB Sata 3 drive in and bootup is half the time. Wow. Why would Dell ever put a Sata 2 drive in at 3 Gb/sec when Sata 3 at 6 Gb/sec is virtually same price?? SSD upgrade may be put on hold now as this thing is fantastic. Just remember to go to Intel site to fix that WiDi driver.

Locked Topics – Laptops General

Was this post helpful?