Anyone had success with Win10 on the Dell Venue 8 Pro?

[pankaj981]

^^ I know we discussed a few months ago on getting back to 8.1 but it did not work. I actually did it again (revert back from tech preview to 8.1 stock) successfully and then performed the upgrade to 10. Give me sometime, I'll give you the exact method that works.

 

[ipaqman1]

After some unsuccessful upgrade attempts, I restored the factory image. Ran the mediacreation tool to do an inplace upgrade. After the upgrade, I deleted the original recovery partition, moved the new recovery partition to the end of the drive and extended the C drive to about 29GB in size.

Then I updated the chipset and network drivers.

The only issue I am running into is not being able to kill the login password prompt. I set it to not require after sleep. I used netplwiz and also changed the prompt signin timeout to Never. My Dell 3147 is set to never ask for the password. It works, but not the DV8P. Maybe, there is a setting I overlooked.

As for battery life, the idle runs as low as 1.19 watts which is lower than the best with Win 8.1. Sleep still uses about 1/2 percent per hour.

The new Edge browser is very fast.

 

[tpapictures]

^^ I know we discussed a few months ago on getting back to 8.1 but it did not work. I actually did it again (revert back from tech preview to 8.1 stock) successfully and then performed the upgrade to 10. Give me sometime, I'll give you the exact method that works.

Really appreciate that! Thank you!!

 

[Roy Khoh]

Anyone tried the "reset" function?
I installed Win10 on my HP Envy X2 to try it out first - reset (keeping my files) worked fine and the only noticeable benefit is that snapping apps to the sides works after the reset. Yes, confirmed the same problem existed in tablet mode before the reset.

Wanted to try the same on the DV8Pro, but "something went wrong" and no changes were made.
Tried it a couple more times and noticed there was problem during the reset.
INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE
Any ideas on what this might be?

 

[HerronScott]

Not 100% happy with it though. Not really an OS that feels very touch friendly (compared to 8.1) hope they fix alot of issues soon but because of my general light use of the tablet ill survive. At least I have no hardware related issues... yet.

I'm curious to get more feedback on how Windows 10 in tablet mode compares to Windows 8.1. I thought Windows 8.1 was great as a tablet OS but not so good as a desktop OS. I'm concerned that's flipped the other way now with Windows 10. My wife is happy with her tablet they way it is so unlikely to take advantage of the free upgrade but I'm on the fence with my own.

Scott

 

[Lundon44]

I took the dive and made the upgrade using the media creation tool yesterday. It completed much quicker than I expected. I removed office, all my larger games and selected clean upgrade/install. So far my issues are slim. I noticed that it wouldn't auto rotate so I had to enable that manually. Other than that it works smooth.

My biggest issue however is that I have a large portion of hard drive space taken up by nothing. I have the 64GB and about 20GB is showing as used (grey) under storage. But it's not part of Windows, it's not part of the recovery partition.. It's just phantom used space. It's not a large Windows.edb file.. I've literally checked everything. And I have a strong feeling the only way to fix it is with a completely clean install via USB to free up that phantom storage space. But who owns a wired mouse and keyboard these days?? Lol

 

[pankaj981]

Really appreciate that! Thank you!!

Sorry I would be traveling for a couple of days so wouldn't be able to post the details but in short this is what I had to do:

1) Install 8.1 Enterprise evaluation clean, delete all drives and let 8.1 create all the recovery drives automatically
2) Download 8.1 recovery drive from xandros9 (you probably have this one already)
3) Move the contents of the recovery drive to a USB drive formatted on FAT32
3) Within recovery options, select reset (not from within advanced restart) while the USB is connected to the tablet
4) The tablet will restart and start restoring Windows 8.1 from the recovery. It also recreates the recovery partition with the OS backup



Let me know if the recovery from xandros9 doesn't work (it did for me once, but I'm still using mine), I'll post mine.

 

[tpapictures]

Let me know if the recovery from xandros9 doesn't work (it did for me once, but I'm still using mine), I'll post mine.

Ok, let me try all this again. I think the only thing different here is that I may not have tried to "reset". I'll need to know how you got to those recovery options. If I recall correctly, nothing I did or could try was getting the tablet to read my USB key with xandros' recovery on it. But I'm willing to try again.

 

[pankaj981]

Ok, let me try all this again. I think the only thing different here is that I may not have tried to "reset". I'll need to know how you got to those recovery options. If I recall correctly, nothing I did or could try was getting the tablet to read my USB key with xandros' recovery on it. But I'm willing to try again.

The recovery options are on 8.1, I think you were getting there but were not able to recover from the USB. I was having trouble myself when trying out options within advanced reset options but the regular reset worked for me. FYI I didn't have to fiddle with any BIOS settings.

 

[tpapictures]

The recovery options are on 8.1, I think you were getting there but were not able to recover from the USB. I was having trouble myself when trying out options within advanced reset options but the regular reset worked for me. FYI I didn't have to fiddle with any BIOS settings.

Ok, back on enterprise 8.1 through reset. About to go to the xandros recovery through reset. Here's the problem I have now that my brain doesn't wanna figure out...
I have a USB 3.0 hub with 4 ports. The 5th port is a port that can charge. This hub also has an AC power input and a microUSB3.0 port on the back, presumably to go to the main device that needs splitting. No combination allows me to feed power to the tablet while connecting mouse, keyboard, etc to it. So reset won't let me run because I don't have power connected. So as good as this hub is, it doesn't do the basic thing I need which is to CHARGE the tablet while giving me a hub to connect several devices to... I think. This is my hub. It appears I need something that splits from the tablet to allow charging on one split and connection to a device hub on the other split.

What device do I need if this isn't it?

 

[dec1950]

Only problems I had, cameras don't work, battery drains quickly, Bluetooth didn't work. I took it to the Microsoft store. They solved the Bluetooth issue, not the other issues.

 

[pankaj981]

What device do I need if this isn't it?

It doesn't need power to reset, I did it on mine with battery power. Just charge your tablet to 100% and you should be good.

 

[Ze Snake]

I'm curious to get more feedback on how Windows 10 in tablet mode compares to Windows 8.1. I thought Windows 8.1 was great as a tablet OS but not so good as a desktop OS. I'm concerned that's flipped the other way now with Windows 10. My wife is happy with her tablet they way it is so unlikely to take advantage of the free upgrade but I'm on the fence with my own.

Scott

It really is flipped the other way round. Button placement sucks, no charm bar with date and time, Metro apps dont launch full screen (and are glitchy because of this, including incorrect rotation scaling issues), metered 3g doesnt display average usage and the edge browser isn't designed for touch really either.
So yeah... Its a bit sucky. Im hoping they really improve this touch experience. Alot of the best features of 8.1 touch is gone. I think Microsoft needs to realize that people who buy tablets want a smooth friendly touch experience first before the benefits of a full fledged OS, otherwise they'd have gone with a laptop. The biggest improvement 10 has for tablet users is the integration between 'metro mode' and 'desktop mode'. But still a long way to go for touch only devices (especially 8inch screens.)

Snake

 

[tpapictures]

It doesn't need power to reset, I did it on mine with battery power. Just charge your tablet to 100% and you should be good.

No luck. No matter what I do, "We can't reset your PC while it's running on battery power." I ordered the Dell dongle. Luckily I got it much cheaper on Amazon.

 

[pankaj981]

No luck. No matter what I do, "We can't reset your PC while it's running on battery power." I ordered the Dell dongle. Luckily I got it much cheaper on Amazon.

Interesting, I never got that prompt on the pre-A11 and A11 BIOS

 

[tpapictures]

Interesting, I never got that prompt on the pre-A11 and A11 BIOS

I did do a BIOS update when I went to the 10 tech preview. Would that have changed things? I updated to the 5830-A10.

 

[Lojik Supreme]

No luck. No matter what I do, "We can't reset your PC while it's running on battery power." I ordered the Dell dongle. Luckily I got it much cheaper on Amazon.

If you found the official dongle on Amazon please share the link. I've been hoping to find it cheaper.

 

[diazlaz]

Has anyone had any issues with their Microphone after the update?

I'm not sure if it's related to Windows 10 and/or drivers or I recently shipped the tablet for service to replace the USB port, and not sure if maybe service forgot to reconnect the microphone or its OS specific. I didn't after I received this with Windows 8.1 build.

Thanks in advance!
LD.

 

[pankaj981]

I did do a BIOS update when I went to the 10 tech preview. Would that have changed things? I updated to the 5830-A10.

I don't think its a BIOS problem.

 

[tpapictures]

I don't think its a BIOS problem.

Oh, ok, I misunderstood. I thought you mentioned the pre-A11 and A11 BIOS in reference to the reset on battery vs power plug.