XPS 8940, Driver and Downloads not offering manual downloads

This situation has been going on for at least the last couple of weeks, no matter which browser is tried.

Bob

It does still work on Linux using Firefox but a non-Dell machine.

@garioch7 provided the current work-around for this issue.  Dell is aware...

@RoHe Dell may be aware, but the question is if this is by design or truly a bug.  They may be testing the waters to see if it drives a lot more people to download their intrusive SupportAssist software that gives them opportunities to spy on customers and upsell various other services.  I'll reserve judgement for a couple weeks to see if this actually gets sorted out.  I truly hope this isn't an intentional move.  If so I will no longer be buying Dell products for myself or my clients.  There are too many competitors with equivalent products to put up with shenanigans like this (assuming it isn't actually just a bug).

It's presumably just a bug, since -obviously- the simple work-around does work. It first showed up on ~16-Oct which is when I reported it to Dell.

The team that handles their support site is separate from the one that handles this forum platform. So we just have to wait for that other team to get to it...

This "bug" is now persisting for a month.  Seems as if my suspicions may be correct.  This would be a very easy bug to fix.  The fact that they haven't for a month leads me to believe this is intentional and they are just trying to see how many people they can get to install their bloatware.  Change my mind...

@dlong500​ 

I went to the XPS 8940 drivers page. It shows all 104 drivers available for manual download. So what am I missing?

@DELL-Chris M  - We typically get a spinning wheel after clicking "Check for updates" that can spin for ~20-30+ sec before -eventually- taking us to a screen that wants to check to see if SupportAssist is installed.

Once it starts checking for SupportAssist, we have to terminate the process by clicking the X in that box before it finally shows the list of drivers...

I sent @Dell-Brad L a vid (via email) a while back to document this problem and I also sent him a .har file generated while attempting to view lists of drivers (regardless of PC model).

If he still has them, maybe he can share with you.  Or, I'll re-make them and email to you.

Thanks.

I understand now, you both are referring to "Check for updates" and SA which are a software controlled (not manual)  automatic driver checks started by the user.

Those were not my definition of a manual downloads check which is what I showed.

@DELL-Chris M   - Ok, now that you understand the issue can you twist some arms to get this fixed (pretty please!)? 

Thanks!

@RoHe​ I will ask Brad.

@RoHe​ I am going to try resubmitting this to get some more traction on this. We will keep you posted, sorry for this dragging on so long. I do still have the files you shared previously.  

Thanks for looking into this.  Forgive my previous skepticism.  For those of us that do clean installs and work on client machines on a semi-daily basis it is quite frustrating to have a 10-30 second delay and extra clicks before getting to the actual firmware and driver downloads.

@Dell-Brad L It's been more than another month and this issue still persists.  It would be really nice if this could finally be addressed for those of us that frequent the driver downloads.