Aaron44126

Well. Fed up and rolled back. It's like one minor issue after another. I’ve worked through a few of them, but… The worst issue is, once every day or so, the system enters some kind of stuttery state with high CPU usage on the "System interrupts" process. I have to reboot to get things back to normal. Difficult to diagnose as the PC is painfully slow to use while it is going on, but of course you need to actually check it while it is going on to find the issue. The perceived benefit of Windows 11 to me is minimal, so I just rolled back to Windows 10 LTSC and for now I'm planning to stick to the plan of waiting for the next LTSC release before upgrading. (Maybe after a few months of patches, things would be more stable…) I do have to wait a few hours now to move my ReFS files around (from another Windows 11 install) because Windows 11 automatically "upgrades" ReFS volumes when they are mounted, making the volume unusable from Windows 10, even after a rollback.

I think it's just an indicator that the touchpad is the NFC touchpoint for the system. You can pull it off from the tab on the right.

Seems like NVIDIA / GeForce Experience are responsible for the graphics slowdowns. https://arstechnica.com/?p=1884284

Manufacturing happens in China to save money. It's cheaper to get all of the components (mostly manufactured in Asia) to one spot in China than to one spot in the U.S.. Labor is cheaper in China as well. As for saving on shipping time... Dell doesn't just build systems in China and ship them to the U.S. They have a worldwide customer base. Lots of users here live in Europe. I don't see them saving money by either opening a second factory just for North America customers, or making the U.S. their primary build location and shipping from there to the rest of the world. I just wish they'd expose the freight tracking data so that you can tell what's going on with the system while it makes its way from China. They have it, I've seen a number of Reddit users who successfully obtained the DHL Air Freight tracking number from a Dell rep and were able to follow their system over.

USB-C -> DP is the ideal setup, I'd say. (USB-C can carry a DisplayPort signal.) HDMI should be able to work off of either the iGPU or dGPU in this system. In previous systems, the HDMI port was physically located right on the dGPU, but in this one it is actually on the motherboard. That said, I haven't tried it yet to confirm...

That's a crazy price. I just got a Precision 7770 with near max specs, other than storage. I think the only things missing from mine are the high-end RTX GPU (I opted for the GeForce which has similar specs) and WWAN. I did upgrade the warranty to five years ProSupport Plus. The system just ran me about $6,200 with tax included. (I did spend extra on SSDs that I did not buy from Dell, but even with 26TB SSD storage I am nowhere near $15,000.) Contact a sales rep and ask for a quote. I got almost $1,500 knocked off the web price. They will discount more for higher-end systems than they will for base systems. Buy your own SSDs, don't get them from Dell, their prices are nuts. Precision 7000 systems come with everything that you need to install the extra drives. The only 12th-gen Alder Lake systems that I'm aware of that support four NVMe SSDs are Precision 7770, MSI GT77, and HP's new 16" ZBook (forget the exact name/model).

I did in-place upgrade to Education edition. The only reason that I'm using Education instead of Enterprise is that I have a bunch of Education licenses. ("LTSC" Enterprise and "regular" Enterprise are licensed separately.)

BIOS update 1.6.2. - Improved the stability of the AC adapter when connected to the system. (...Huh?) https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=7J3NK [Edit] Updated with no issue. Did you repad the new one or are you using the stock pads for now?

BIOS update 1.15.2. - Fixed the issue where the system can wake up after the force or abnormal shutdown using Wake on LAN when the Wake on LAN is disabled. - Fixed the issue where the admin password window is displayed when you run the Pre-Boot System Assessment (ePSA) in the BIOS setup. - Fixed the issue where the system stops responding at the Dell logo while booting. https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=7FY0G

It's not really just a matter of making it usable (which I understand can be done). It's a matter of them shoving changes down with no particular schedule that I'll have to figure out how to disable. This is my PC and I shouldn't have to put up with that... I want to decide when to upgrade and subject myself to that. It seems like this has now been addressed with their changes to how features will be rolled out to Enterprise and Education edition systems. Then... there's also just the "philosophical" issue of them treating end users as the "product" and trying to make money off of them (monetization features) which I also have an objection to and do not want to support. I did start playing with Windows 11 a bit last night. I upgraded in-place from Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021 to Windows 11 (22H2) Education Edition (leaving myself in a position to roll back if I so choose). I haven't had a lot of time to mess with it but observations so far: Two attempts to get seconds on the taskbar clock came out sub-par. ElevenClock is nifty but if you interact with the taskbar you will see the native Windows clock popping up over the clock that ElevenClock attempts to put on top of it, which looks pretty messy. Start11 has a feature to put seconds directly into the native clock, but the width of the clock changes when a "1" pops up in the time, as in the clock font, the number "1" is skinnier than the other numbers, and that causes the tray icons to also shift position and flicker. (When the seconds ticks through 09, 10, 11, 12... each one of those has a different number of "1"s and causes such a shift.) I may well program my own solution. I fired up RetroArch on a whim and ran an N64 game, and it is rather stuttery rather than butter smooth 60 FPS that I was getting on Windows 10. Gotta dig in and figure out what's going on there. Maybe it's pushing too much load onto the E cores. (A couple of other games/emulators that I tried were fine.) Call me picky, but these are issues that I didn't have on Windows 10. And this is just after using the system and trying different things for like 45 minutes. I'm sure that I'll run into more. It's not all bad. I do like the "look" better than Windows 10, in general (though I could do without the rounded corners on windows — looks like there is a solution for that). My primary motivation for upgrading was just to make use of features in my new laptop that Windows 10 does not support. Thread Director for Alder Lake is an obvious one. Also, iGPU VRR support is way better; with Windows 10 VRR only works on apps using DirectX 12 or exclusive full screen, whereas it is way more broad support in Windows 11 (22H2). I'm trying the Start Menu which now has folders for pinned items and seeing if I can tolerate that, but I can always fall back to Start11 if it doesn't work out. [Edit] Looks like Stardock is addressing my issue with seconds on the clock causing the clock width to change.

Regarding feature stability. Starting with Windows 11, version 22H2 ("2022 Update"), we have some news from Microsoft regarding the timing for new features being activated on Windows 11. Old stuff: Microsoft will ship a new "major version" of Windows yearly (in the second half of the year). The time that each "major version" is supported for depends on which Windows edition it is: 24 months (Home/Pro) or 36 months (Enterprise/Education). New features will not be held back until a "major version" drops; they will drop throughout the year "when they are ready". New stuff: In order to continue to get new features, you must be on the latest yearly release. If you stay on an older release that is still supported with monthly patches, you won't be getting new feature additions. New features might not be enabled for everyone all at once. They are using "controlled feature rollout" so new features might be activated only for a subset of users at first. (...As if things weren't confusing enough already.) Users who actively install the "preview" updates released on Windows Update later in each month will get new features first. Here's the one that is most interesting to me. If you are on Enterprise or Education edition, new features delivered via monthly updates will be disabled by default. The new features can be enabled via Group Policy, if desired, or otherwise they will remain inactive until you install the next yearly update — which you don't necessarily have to do right away; with 36 months support, you could actually skip a version or two while still receiving security updates. (If you are on Enterprise/Education edition and you install next year's 23H2 update, all of the "optional" features that were delivered to Home/Pro users during the 22H2 cycle will become active.) [Edit] It is being reported that the feature drop coming in October/November is excluded from this policy. These features (including tabbed File Explorer) will be enabled by default on Enterprise/Education edition installs. Basically, these were slated for the 22H2 release but not ready in time? Subsequent feature additions will not be enabled by default. This makes me reconsider my strategy for staying on Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC. If I can use Windows 11 Education Edition and only have to worry about new features dropping when I explicitly choose to upgrade to a new major release, rather than just "maybe anytime a monthly patch shows up", I'll consider using it. I have several Education Edition licenses. ...I'll do some testing and evaluate. It will depend on how "true" to this strategy with feature additions they are, and also how much hassle it is to disable monetizing features (like widgets). Ars Technica article on feature updates TechRepublic article on feature updates Trying to find some MS documentation on this feature-update-disabled Group Policy stuff and will update if/when I do...

In typical fashion, it's not even "done". (The MS article mentions features like tabs in File Explorer not launching until October.)

22H2 is live. https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2022/09/20/available-today-the-windows-11-2022-update/

Hardware encryption is disabled by default in Windows these days due to rampant vulnerabilities / poor implementation by SSD makers. If you want to use it, you have to enable it via Group Policy (gpedit.msc) or Windows will force software encryption. (I posted a link above on what group policy setting it is.) It is also important that the drive is in the "ready to enable hardware encryption" state before Windows is installed on it. It sounds like you did that. (You can get it to enable hardware encryption on an existing Windows install but it requires jumping through hoops that are not documented.) If you have done a new Windows install, have the disk showing encryption "ready"/"enabled" in Samsung Magician, and have enabled hardware encryption via Group Policy, then it "should" be working... I'm not sure how important it is to secure erase with Samsung's tool. I ended up taking my drive to a different system to do that. It seems like getting it to boot with legacy boot (not UEFI) is easier. If your drive was encrypted with software encryption before you made the group policy switch, you will of course have to decrypt it and then turn on BitLocker again in order to get it to switch to hardware encryption.

If there is no load on the system, the fans should cycle between the lowest level (≈2400 RPM or less) and off (0 RPM). Assuming the fans are plugged in properly, if the system is complaining about a fan failure and it is behaving strangely with regards to the fans... it's gotta be either the motherboard or the fan. I don't think you can (easily) separate the fans from the heatsink assembly in this one. Even if you could, it looks like the price for buying a set of fans or a whole heatsink (with fans) is about the same. You can purchase a heatsink assembly on eBay for $25ish (USD) — I would assume that some sellers offer worldwide shipping. Of course, removing the heatsink will also require applying new thermal paste when installing a new one. There are different versions of the heatsink assembly (depending on the GPU, I think). If you are going to pick up a new one, put in your service code at dell.com/support and look at the parts list for your system to see which one you have.

Well... It's a Dell laptop, a Dell dock, and a Dell monitor, so that's good for getting Dell to fix it anyway. Make sure that you have the latest dock firmware installed. Release notes mention monitor compatibility. https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=5x3w3&oscode=wt64a&productcode=dell-wd19dcs-dock Clearly, it is an issue with the display signal coming off of the Intel integrated GPU (since the discrete GPU doesn't have the problem), but I don't know if it is something that could be fixed by doing, say, a motherboard swap... it might be the case that they are just "all this way" and the fix is going to be more on the firmware/software side. I'd refer you to Dell support to see how they want to handle this, be it swapping out hardware or trying to reproduce the issue in their lab to work on a fix. (This is the sort of thing that will be more smooth if you have ProSupport.) Have you tried connecting your U4320Q monitor directly to the system via USB-C to see if the flickering shows up that way too?

My understanding is that it is a little bit faster and a little bit more expensive. I'm sure it's a fine drive, but "noticing a real-world difference" from 980 Pro (other than benchmarks) would probably be difficult.

The heatsink will not fit. Get it without.

@win32asmguy has done it, but P cores only (see page 5).

Found it -- https://www.nbrchive.net/forum.notebookreview.com/threads/precision-7560-7760-owners-thread.836381/page-131.html Are you NBR user "summersun"? If not, the issue is too specific to be a coincidence. (Looks like it was not solved after all...) Have you engaged Dell ProSupport? They might be able to bump it up to the engineering team and get an answer. (Or you might get sent on a wild goose chase.)

Someone else had this and I believe ended up solving it. Let me see if I can find the posts...

I've dropped some beta builds in the thread (linked in signature)... I really should get everything together and do a proper release, just another thing on the "can't find the time" pile. 😕

Windows 11, version 22H2 showing up on new Dell laptops. https://www.neowin.net/news/windows-11-22h2-apparently-already-shipping-with-build-22621521-kb5017321/ Supposedly the release is set for September 20, but Microsoft hasn't given an official announcement.

I wonder if that holds true for the E cores? The Alder Lake E cores are more efficient at low power levels and the P cores are more efficient at high power levels. I haven't seen much specifically looking at E cores performance & efficiency because most people doing benchmarks are just interested in the biggest number you can get. (Getting the OS to properly distribute processes when you want to save power could be a challenge as well.)

I can see them moving the 17.3" system to 16:10 by keeping the same screen width and increasing the height, basically... They could even remove the "Dell" logo beneath the screen and have some extra space to work with at the bottom (like they have done with the XPS / Precision 5000 systems). And maybe you could call that 18". ...Though, if the size that they need is not one that is becoming standard in the industry, I sort of doubt that Dell would go through the effort and expense of contracting some screen manufacturer to make custom-sized displays just for this system.