I recently purchased a Precision M6800 (i7-4930MX, 32GB Ram, 512GB SSD, Quadro K3100M, Wireless 1601 and BT, Blu-Ray Writer. In addition I added a 840EVO 1TB SSD.)
It came with Windows 8.0 Pro.
Since this was already out of date, I used the MS Store to do an in-place upgrade and downloaded the Dell Enterprise Client M6800 8.1 Driver CAB.
As soon as 8.1 finished installing the problems began, which I initially attributed to Drivers.
1. Shutdown/Restart would hang almost indefinitely unless I interceded by pressing the Power button. If I let it go for as long as 30 minutes a blue screen sometimes occurred with DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE error. I pursued several solutions (including eliminating hibernation, but this did not fix the problem.)
2. Dell Wireless 1601 802.11 wireless driver would suddenly become 'Disconnected' and invisible in Device manager. On reboot it would be their again. If I attempted to discover new hardware when not there, the MMC would just hang. If I attempted to update the driver with the one in the CAB, the MMC would state that it's up-to-date. If I tried to uninstall it, it would just hang.
3. After installing Hyper-v, any attempt to create a either a wired or wireless Virtual Switch would result in an error (Virtual Switch Manager: Error Applying Virtual Switch Changes...Timeout period expired (0x800705B4). Attempted reinstall, but problem persisted.
I decided to install Windows Server 2012 R2 (MSDN) on the second SSD. I knew full well that Bluetooth would be excluded. However I don't really need it.
The installation was flawless. I used the same drivers that came in the 8.1 CAB for the wired and wireless internet.
I experienced no problems with 1) Restart/Shutdown; 2) Both wireless and wired ethernet are rock solid; 3) and Hyper-V and the Virtual Switch Manager perform without error.
I rebooted to 8.1 and rolled back to 8.0.
Now all of the above works fine on 8.0.
So basically, I had the same hardware and drivers for 8.1, and 2012 R2. 8.1 is a mess and 2012R2 works great.
Anyone know what is going on?