Dell XPS 15 (9550) list of hardware and software problems

Try the newest Beta drivers from intel's site when searching HD530 graphics driver. You may need to install via the device manager as Dell drivers will reject them.

 

Thank you for the reply. Before I try any beta drivers, I was interested if people could confirm or deny the problems with the "stable" Intel drivers from Dell. I think they are dated March 30. If other people do not have these issues, then the driver version may not be problem. I am not a fan of "beta" drivers, because they may or may not fix things and they may make things worse.

I saw that people had the same issue I currently have and the suggestion was to try beta drivers. Now the new stable drivers are much more recent and I seem to have the same problem. I am not sure what the situation is for other people.

 

ctwt,

Rather thorough discussion about this on the XPS 15 9550 Owner's Thread, starting on page 198...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/dell-xps-15-skylake-9550-owners-lounge.783377/page-198

 

Regarding the Dell drivers, they are a Dell repackaged version of an older version of Intel's drivers. There is no advantage in using them over the standard Intel drivers... In fact they are probably older than the current Intel drivers.

Many owners are using the latest Intel Beta and experiencing better, less glitchy performance.

 

I had trouble installing non-Dell Intel drivers, says the package is incompatible with my Dell iGPU...

 

A bit more reading and you would see people keep referring to a manual install being needed to put them on the 1st time.

 

That information is very helpful. So it seems that I am not alone with this problem. Quite interesting that there is a sudden outbreak discussing the Intel graphics drivers in the owner's thread after I asked in this thread.

I am a bit surprised that the newly released drivers do not fix issues that people have had for 5 months. One would think that this would be a priority for Dell.

OK, so I have the option of trying newer drivers or simply continue using the Nvidia card as a workaround until a better stable version comes out.

 

Again, Dell doesn't make the drivers... Intel does. Dell just repackages them in a Dell box.

These issues are affecting all Skylake boards/chips, not just the XPS 15, or even just systems from Dell. This is not Dell's fault, although it is their problem... And ours. The blame here falls squarely on Intel... And us for being early Skylake adopters.

 

And the sudden outbreak isn't because the problems are new. I took the initiative to help out a guy over there who was about to return his system due to these shoddy drivers. The last 4-5 pages of that thread reflect that. I just saw his post before I saw yours.

 

OK, I had not realized that other Skylake systems suffer the same problems. I thought Dell repackaged older drivers. If Intel is taking so long to resolve these issues, I wonder if they are able to solve this at all. I think the Intel graphics drivers are the most unstable software aspect of the XPS 9550.

 

Agreed. They seem to be causing almost all the major problems people are having... Including SOME of the problems with the TB15 Thunderbolt dock.

And yes, Dell DOES repackage older Intel drivers. They are older because it takes Dell a few weeks to verify the drivers on all their hardware configurations. Dell just verifies that they function at a basic level on their systems without creating conflicts with other drivers/hardware... They have no control over their general bugginess... That's entirely on Intel.

 

mea culpa

 

Watergate again speaking here! Just wanted to say that I am still VERY HAPPY with my SWAPED laptop 9550!
Still works an runs like a charm!! However I have, as I had with all the other WINDOWS 10 machines occasionally a black screen starting windows up including a mouse pointer. Only solution is to hit the power button and start up once again. Any solution for this matter?
All drivers are UP o date!

Have a good weekend!

Sincerely,

 

I've noticed lately that I'm getting TDP throttled during games at times.

Checked HWInfo and I see IA: Package-Level RAPL/PBM PL2/PL3 and GT: Package-level RAPL/PBM PL1 were both triggered. Not sure what this means or how I can remedy it.

 

If you have the mod with the pads connecting the heatsink to chassis I am not surprised as it will eventually be sucking in hot air due to the inlets being heatd by the mod, this is why I sacked it as a very bad plan due to the whole laptop heating up. I knew it was sucking in hot air after a while.

 

Temps are fine, the max temps are in the high 70's. What temp sensor in particular could trip this? BDPROCHOT isn't triggered.

 

Got a refurbish Dell XPS 15 UHD, I5, 8GB Ram, 256gb, 2 year warranty, Total $1100.
Is been 3 days old, The Only problem i did had with the laptop so far was the slow wake up from sleep, As i did the google how to fix the problem i found many people complain about other problems as well. One other problem i had notice was the Color Shift (screen turn red ) when viewing from a higher angle or lower angle. viewing horizontally color only change slightly. My only concern now is How bad is the response time for this laptop. I play rocket league don't seems to have any problem.
Also about the color shift does it come with every XPS laptop?

 

Naw. That cannot be the reason for it. Gotta trust the sensors on that.

 

with or without that the VRM's cook on this, hitting the 90's, who knows what temps the other 3 ambients trigger a downclock at though.

 

If it was anything like mine which would show up randomly and black screen then this may disappoint you. I had to get my motherboard replaced by Dell which seemed to fix it.
I tried isolating the issue by dual booting Windows 10 with Manjaro KDE (An eay to install Linux OS which runs amazing on this) and the same black screen would occur randomly under Linux as it did under Windows 10 which proved it was a hardware fault. I also had the latest bios and drivers under windows and manjaro.
On the Dell forum some user suggested disabling the nvidia GPU in Windows but that would keep the nvidia GPU power on while still using the intel gpu in windows which would drain battery fast and not really solve the issue but apparently this worked for them and that isolated it to the gpu.
If you can isolate the problem like I did then you could know for sure its either a hardware fault or a software fault but if in doubt get the motherboard replaced with the service tag warranty.

 

Hello guys.
I have bought refurb 9550 i7 16GB 512Gb for 1k £. But I face problem with audio driver. Sometimes, after inserting earPods, all sound just disappears. Only reboot helps. Any fixes please?

 

Been addressed here many times with many different solutions. Read the past posts.

 

What code word for search I can use?
I searched Jack, audio and didn't find anything. Maybe it is better to put this information in the first page?

 

Man, I have wasted hour to look at 70 pages and found only that motherboard replacement will help. Why you did not said it at first?

 

Because we get fed up of people asking the same questions over and over

 

Put this trouble on first page!
And my PM951 have same performance on AHCI or Raid, so I think it is need to switch to AHCI only if you have some problems.

 

Well it seems I found a fix to the random crashing where it would fail to write a crash dump and then drop the SSD on a reboot.

Plug a fekin USB stick in and tell windows to write the crash dump to that... 5 days and counting and still no BSOD with a critical process died.

 

tell the OP to do it, no one else can!

 

In case you don't know it, there is another different, much larger thread here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/dell-xps-15-skylake-9550-owners-lounge.783377/

If you intend to keep this machine you should be aware that there are a great many issues with it, many of us suffering several at a time. It is a great machine so if you intend to keep it, you should be prepared to read through the entire thread above and this one from the very beginning. There is a wealth of information here generously provided by folks here suffering far longer than you or I.

 

Anybody having problems with the mousepad being hard to click down on one side or the other? My laptop has literally had 0 issues, but recently I needed to open it up again to re attach one of the hdd cables (intel rst randomly dropped the drive dunno) and my left side clicker stopped working. It was still stiff (I could tap the mouse fine) but it kinda jogged into place like it was being caught up.

I noticed today the right side is also seemingly catching. I wonder if I pull the battery I can shift it around or something to prevent any catching?

 

I'm having the same problem here. I've already tried reinstalling all the drivers in a specific sequence as prescribed by Dell but no luck. They don't know how to fix it. I recommend staying away from the WD15 dock for a few more months and just buy something else.

 

What's your BIOS version? I noticed BIOS 1.02.00 claims to fix this:
Fixes & Enhancements
1. Improved the system stability
2. Fixed system may not able to boot with external monitor with lid closed
3. Fixed USB audio/mouse may be lag while connecting to Dell Thunderbolt Dock (TB15) and Dell Dock (WD15)
4. Fixed Fan may be noisy while connecting to Dell Thunderbolt Dock (TB15) and Dell Dock (WD15)
5. Fixed Bitlocker Malfunction or Keeps Prompting Recovery Key every time reboot

 

The latest Aida64 beta has corrected sensor readouts now

 

A problem I have is that the audio stops working after unplugging the headphones from the audio jack. That is, there is no sound from the speakers or the audio jack if you plug the headphones back in.

BIOS: 1.20
Dell Realtek Driver: 6.0.1.7737

I also tried 6.0.1.7808 (not provided by Dell) which causes the problem to happen less often
When using the Microsoft driver "High Definition Audio Device," happens even less often. Using that option, you have to fight with windows to not automatically update the driver. The Microsoft driver is less desirable since no DSP is available for the speakers and the microphone.

The problem is also reported from many others at:
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/19665375
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3517/t/19661257

 

Some people fixed the issue by software. I tried to fix this usign all the software means that I found, but never worked.
I called Dell and they sent an engineer to replace the motherboard (since that was their diagnostic via twitter direct messages). Surprisingly, their replacement (allegedly new) motherboard worked beautifully.

 

Powershare does not work on my XPS 15 (9550). It's turned on in the BIOS. My expectation is that if the laptop is plugged in (battery charged), and I put it into standby mode, it should still charge my phone. Am I missing something? When the laptop is in standby, the USB ports are completely dead. Anyone else have this problem? I'm running Fedora 23, but I don't think this should affect it (could be wrong though...), as I feel it's a BIOS-controlled activity.

Also, I notice that in BIOS 01.02.00, there's just an enable/disable function for Powershare. I saw somewhere in a Dell BIOS manual that I should (?) be able to set the depth of discharge before Powershare turns off. Again, my BIOS just allows me to enable or disable the feature. Yours too?

Anyone else's keyboard tend to add extra cchhaarraacctteerrss?

Thanks!
Richard

 

Hey Gonzo,

Could you clarify what you mean by the "mod"?

I had to send my laptop in bc the cpu got to 97C while gaming...they sent it back, and now it gets to 94. I opened it up only to find they put cooling pads everywhere (LOL) and put a TON of thermal paste on.

I just got it back and it gets to 95C now. I went and removed the thermal paste and put my own on (Gelid GC xtreme) and could only get the temps to come down to about 93-94C. Was wondering if there was any way to make this thing a little cooler or if it's just a me issue?

 

I can almost promise you that your heatsink isn't properly making contact. Are the pads all solidly touching the ram?

 

Hi, thank you for your response.

there are no pads on the ram? and i know tone gets lost so this is not meant to be rude at all, but why does it matter that the pads are on the ram? it's the CPU that's heating like crazy. (forgive me if i'm just being a complete noob)

 

I'm assuming this temp is reached with the gpu active, like gaming. This is because the heat from one chip will affect the temps of the other. The XPS 15 is known to have poor connections between the heat sink and the gpu ram. There are 4 ram chips, and if one doesn't make good contact then it will increase your temperatures.

 

oh you meant the ram on the GPU! My apologies.

Honestly, I don't know internals of a laptop very well. So what I did was open the chasis, remove the heatsink, rub off the insane paste job they did on the 2 "chips" that were exposed and then put the heatsink back on. The 2 chips were very small - smaller than what I thought a CPU ought to look like. Are there other "chips" I need to make sure it's making contact with? And if so, where are they located? I was afraid to gut the thing...

 

And to answer your question - yes. There are pads placed directly on top of the 4 ram chips of the GPU i believe. Kind of like how they place the pad on top of the SSD - that kind of style

 

Yes, I know there are pads on them. The question is whether those pads are making contact

 

I opened her up, refitted the pads directly on top of the chips (some got stuck to the heatsink) and screwed tightly to make sure they would touch

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac179/DAhn626/IMG_6777.jpg

Is this kind of what you had in mind?

 

Yeah. If you look at the bottom of the heat spreader you'll notice that not all parts of it are the same height. Yet the ram is all the same height, leading to one of the chips ending up not making contact. I replaced my pads with slightly thicker ones (It's usually the lower-left chip that isn't touching) and lowered my furmark gpu max from 89 to 85C. If your cpu is still hot then it's likely a faulty (perhaps crimped?) heat sink. Prime 95 never got my i7 above 76C on its own, though I was undervolted by -100mv

 

It looks about right, the CPU & GPU look smaller than normal as they have no lids fitted like they would in a separate video card or removable consumer CPU, this is to allow better contact of the bit that needs cooling and not have another lump transmitting heat.
As for that paste job, I have seen better, you're not spreading cream on a scone!

Left (CPU) has excellent contact as whats left is basically see through so a grain of rice will be enough size wise, the GPU on the other hand has a lot left so either it is the fat so much was applied or the heatsinks a bit warped.

As for the ram pads they look like they have been chewed by a dog now but seem to be well squashed by the heatsink in pic #2 so I wouldnt worry. They do not kick out much heat anyway and probably get hotter with the heat coming form the CPU/GPU tbh. I did fit a thicker pad on the one that is only partially covered by the heatsink (I think it is the 2nd down on the right hand pair) but that is only because I am fussy.

The thing is (and I get fed up repeating this when people complain about hot laptops but this is in no way sarcastic dig at you) is it is a laptop, not a games rig. It just happens to have a half decent GPU so it will play games but it is hard to shift that heat. Also power management will always try and keep it quiet at the expense of heat so it will plod along at 90c with the fans at 4000rpm (80%) instead of 80c and 5000rpm(100%)

If you are having a problem the event log will show that it has throttled back the CPU cores at a hardware level (it hit Tjunction max on the CPU/GPU or an associated sensor)

Otherwise you can run a monitoring app that will show if it throttles the CPU (Aida64's benchmark app) or GPUz will show whats slowed the GPU down such as max wattage)



(oooh check out Mr Prada wallet!)

 

LOL at that last comment. I sold that wallet, that's why the pics on there.

Wanted to say thank you to you both for your help.

As for the thermal component, I really tried to take some off, but I guess it needs to be even smaller. You should have seen it before i cleaned it off...it was like they decided to have some chip with their thermal grease instead of the other way around. there was so much you couldn't even see the entire board.

I understand this isn't a gaming rig - it's meant to be more for the occasional game, but I think these temps are ridiculous, no? I just got them after opening it up and resticking on the pads :-\

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac179/DAhn626/EVEN HOTTER.png

Sigh...it doesn't even matter at this point. This computer continues to hang and freeze no matter what I do. I've read a ton of the pages in here and still nothing.

With the 256gb nvme, installed samsung 950 driver, intel IDE, running in GPT AHCI UEFI. Then tried to install a 950 pro and still the same results. Did clean installation of windows multiple times. I installed whocrashed but it never records anything. Did a refresh reinstall in RAID and still same results. Without the 950 driver, i get BSOD. With the 950, the computer hangs but never gets to the BSOD. I really have no idea what to do...dell is supposed to contact me with another resolution (they offered a refurbished computer but that's BS!)

 

Very good picture for reference for all of us who don't do much hardware disassembly. Thanks.

 

Dell releases their service guide, which is extremely helpful. This guide was excellent

http://topics-cdn.dell.com/pdf/xps-15-9550-laptop_Service Manual_en-us.pdf

Glad it can help!

 

Nah screw a refund, start yelling about the time you have wasted, time is money and the defective product is causing you to waste money, replace it with a new build with onsite warranty or process a FULL refund so you can order again and raise a claim against them for time wasted that you will take via small claims court if needs be.

I yell a lot