Just wanted to say thank for your post in the "XPS 8700 suddenly slow rebooting and starting" thread. I had the same issue and your post help me solved it.

Is this the one that is supposedly broken?:

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/DriverDetails/Product/xps-8700?driverId=P84MY&osCode=WB64A&fileId=3290056386&languageCode=EN&categoryId=NI

What I find really strange is the Windows 8 driver appears to be more recent than the Windows 8.1 driver. How is that even possible?

Your link pointed to the Intel driver, the one that does not work for me is this one:

Hard-Drive-DW1703_Win8.1_A00_Setup-P84MY_ZPE.exe

and the link is:

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/DriverDetails/Product/xps-8700?driverId=P84MY&osCode=WB64A&fileId=3290056386&languageCode=EN&categoryId=NI

However, this is not the same file that I pointed to earlier.  Apparently Dell has changed the file link(s) sometime over the last 48 hours or so.

Yeah, I don't know what happened with the links. I only know that the most recent (Dell-Atheros) driver available for download on Dell's web page for Win 8.1 has an earlier date than the driver for Win 8 (8.1 driver is listed as October 17th while the Win 8 driver shows November 20th). 

Anyway, my issue does not appear to be as debilitating as was your issue; my boot times are somewhat reasonable. I'm not sure why that would be other than, perhaps, you're running 8.1 Pro and I'm not.

Regardless, what I would REALLY like to know is exactly what advantage the Dell Qualcomm Atheros BT/WiFi Driver has over the Windows 8.1 generic driver. Is there a difference in functionality that you have noticed? If there is little or no difference, then why not just use the generic Windows driver?

XPS 8700 Win 8.1

Same issue with long reboot times and removed this software suite, with all the issues of uninstalling as described in the posts.  Allowed windows to set up the automatic drivers and this resolved the long boot time issue.  This software suite also has other issues with blue tooth add-ins for outlook.  Upon installing outlook 2010 the qualcom add-in generated errors as well.  Will wait and see if an update comes out but both devices check out fine with the windows installed drivers.

Thanks,  

I have the same issue, but I cannot uninstall Dell WLAN and Bluetooth Client installation from Control Panel. I assume this is the program all post above talk about. I get error message: "The installer cannot run on this platform. Please select package for your operating system"

Dell needs to do something about it!!!!

Correct, I am simply selecting uninstall from Control Panel. 

When I bought by XPS 8700, I installed SSD and put fresh Win 8 Pro (64 bit) on it.

How are you trying to uninstall the Dell WLAN and Bluetooth Client? Directly from the Control Panel by selecting it and clicking uninstall? Do you also have a XPS8700 that originally came with Windows 8 x64 (as uninstalling from the Control Panel worked for me)?

The XPS-8700_Network_Driver_P84MY_WN_10.0.0.260_A00.EXE download from Dell installs a Qualcomm Atheros Communications driver for Dell Wireless 1703 Bluetooth card (WLAN WiFi 802.11 b/g/n + Bluetooth Half-Height Mini-PCI Express Card - FXP0D) with the following details:

Driver Date: 25/07/2013 Driver Version: 8.0.1.232

This driver doesn't seem to cause a 2 min delay on shutdown described here.

However, the latest version 8.0.1.241 (dated approx. 5 days later, i.e. 30/07/2013) was causing the delay on my XPS8700. I'm not sure, but most likely it was installed via Windows (or Dell) Update.

The bottom line is : install version 8.0.1.232 from XPS-8700_Network_Driver_P84MY_WN_10.0.0.260_A00.EXE and make sure it's not automatically updated to 8.0.1.241.

Is it possible to communicate this issue to Dell, so they think of a solution?