Dell Precision Performance Optimizer Owner's Manual
Notes NOTE: A NOTE indicates important information that helps you make better use of your computer. © 2013 Dell Inc. Trademarks used in this text: Dell™, the DELL logo, Dell Precision™, Precision ON™,ExpressCharge™, Latitude™, Latitude ON™, OptiPlex™, Vostro™, and Wi-Fi Catcher™ are trademarks of Dell Inc. Intel®, Pentium®, Xeon®, Core™, Atom™, Centrino®, and Celeron® are registered trademarks or trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.
Contents Notes................................................................................................................................................2 Dell Precision Performance Optimizer (DPPO).........................................................................4 Profiles......................................................................................................................................................................5 Active Profiles...........................................
Dell Precision Performance Optimizer (DPPO) Dell Precision Performance Optimizer contains a powerful engine that allows you to dynamically configure your system settings to optimize the performance of your system. It also keeps you informed of any available software updates and applies them when configured to do so. Further, it contains a tracking subsystem that can gather extensive data about your system and help identify potential problems.
Option Function Brings up a menu that allows you to launch either the About Page or this Help Takes you to the Home page Profiles The left pane of the home page displayed lists the active and inactive profiles. A profile is a collection of policies that are grouped together to achieve a common performance objective. Profiles are referred by a friendly name that identifies this objective. Multiple profiles may be active at the same time. A policy defines the system parameters that must be monitored.
NOTE: The software may come with special profiles that can be activated when no other profile is active. These profiles are automatically deactivated by the software once they have executed. For example: Load Dell Factory Defaults profile is a profile that can be used to restore certain system parameters back to the factory defaults. System Updates The bottom left side of the home page displays the number of software updates available.
Resource Utilization The home page displays the utilizations of the following resources: • Memory • CPU • Storage • Graphics The needle of the speedometers shows the current utilization of Memory, CPU and Storage. This data is refreshed every 2 seconds. If Dell Smart Tracking is enabled on the system, you will see a green bar in the speedometer dials. The green bar represents the previous utilization average read from the last Dell Smart Tracking report.
Profiles and Policies This page lists all the policies in a selected profile. The name of the selected profile appears in the blue bar on the screen. The names and descriptions of policies appears in the space after the blue bar.
System Maintenance System Information This page shows a summary of your system configuration. It also lists the available software updates for your system. The blue banner contains the System Make and Model along with the Dell Service Tag. The following option appears on this banner: Option Function This icon will launch standard Windows utility that displays the detailed System Information Dell System Updates are specific to DPPO and your system's hardware and software configuration.
Check Updates Click this button to check for available updates. This operation may take a few minutes to complete. Once the operation completes, the list of all available updates is displayed in the right pane and all updates are selected by default. Individual updates are listed under their respective Device Categories and the appropriate criticality icon is also displayed before the name of the update.
The list of available updates displays detailed information including the Version and Release Date information: • Check/Uncheck TYPE (Hardware Drivers, BIOS Updates, Application software, Firmware Updates) check boxes to select or de-select the corresponding updates from the selection. • Check/Uncheck criticality (Critical/Recommended/Optional) check boxes to select or de-select the corresponding updates from the selection. • Click on Apply Updatebutton to install the current selection of updates.
Notifications The application may give notifications to the user using pop-up dialog boxes to inform user if some problem occurred during a check for updates or if a system reboot is required for installed update to work. You may see a dialog similar to the one below: If you click Yes the system will start the reboot process. Please make sure that you close all other applications and save your data before proceeding. If you click No the installed update will not be complete.
Manual Select if you do not want the application to perform any update operation periodically in the background. You must use Check Updates button to look for available updates and then use Apply Updates to install these updates from the System Maintenance page. Weekly Select option to allow the application to perform weekly update operations based on other filters selected on this page.
Update History After viewing the history logs, click the Update List button to go back to the previous page that lists all the updates.
Track and Analyze This page allows you to enable/disable Dell Smart Tracking feature as well as view previously generated reports. Enable/Disable Smart Tracking When enabled, Smart Tracking collects system configuration information as well as subsystem usage data in the background. Smart Tracking reports contain data such as Fan speed, Thermal data, Battery usage, Processor Utilization etc. over a period of time.
NOTE: This page also shows you if there are any previously generated reports available for you to view. Click on “… Reports Ready” to view these Smart Tracking reports. Smart Tracking Enable Smart Tracking This page allows you to enable/disable Dell Smart Tracking feature by clicking the On/Off button. When enabled, Smart Tracking runs for the specified period and collects system configuration and subsystem usage data.
Smart Tracking reports contain data such as Fan speed, Thermal data, Battery usage, Processor Utilization etc. These reports help you understand the behavior of specific system, under the operating environment, that was present when the report was running. You can configure the following options that control the operation of Smart Tracking: Report Frequency This setting controls how often reports are generated.
Y-axis — displays the percentage of time the given range (or specific value) was found during the report interval For example: In the preceding report for Temperature (Location Memory), the graph shows the range of temperature in degree Celsius on the X-axis. The Y-axis shows the percentage of time the temperature was found to be in the range, say 30-40 C. Export/Print a Report Click the Export icon to save the selected report in an XML format.
Troubleshooting Installation Issues 1. Can I use DPPO on my non-Dell laptop or desktop? No. DPPO software has been especially designed to optimize the performance of your Dell machine. DPPO will not run on any non-Dell system. 2. Why does DPPO installer fail with a message saying my system is not supported? DPPO will not install on operating systems other than Windows 7 or Windows 8. Windows Vista or earlier versions are not supported. 3.
You may also see this failure because of a conflict with some other application that updates your system e.g. Dell Client System Update software. If this happens, please retry the operation after closing other applications and associated update schedulers. 2. Why do I see “Update requires reboot” message sometimes? Not all software updates require the system to be rebooted.
Getting Help 2 Contacting Dell NOTE: If you do not have an active Internet connection, you can find contact information on your purchase invoice, packing slip, bill, or Dell product catalog. Dell provides several online and telephone-based support and service options. Availability varies by country and product, and some services may not be available in your area. To contact Dell for sales, technical support, or customer service issues: 1. Visit dell.com/support 2. Select your support category. 3.
