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

Glad I found this thread. I'm getting smoked every day multiple times with the Critical Process Died bluescreen. I have the 512GB SSD only option and using AHCI. My system wouldn't recognize the SSD in RAID mode. Will try these Samsung drivers tonight.

Btw, should I be uninstalling a driver before installing the Samsung one?

 

Is annyone else having a problem with keys repeating on the XPS 9550? I'm on my second XPS 9550, ,and both have had this problem where, especially when typing quickly, that kekys will be repeated - even though I only hit the key once. I've been living on computers sinice the Apple][+ and have never had this problem before. Doing some searching, there are numerous reports of this happening on previous Dell machines - going back years.
In particular, it happens with the comma key. So if I type is, ,is, is, ,is, ,is, ,is, ,is, ,is, is, is, is, is, is, is, ,is,
it will repeat the comma with high frequency, as above. Amazingly, it will repeat the comma after I hit the space. So there's a little delay before the repeat happens. Really unbelievable. This is my second XPS with this exact problem. Returned the first to Best Buy. Was at the MSFT store today and tried out the floor model XPS. Same problem. I assume that all copies have this but most people haven't noticed.
If the upcoming BIOS doesn't fix this, will be returning this one as well. At least I get a new laptop ever 30 days. Thanks Dell!
But seriously, annyone else have this problem?

 

Hello,

I followed many of mike_nbr's suggestions from his very helpful first post.
I noticed that two of his "General recommendations" are in the wrong order though.
Changing those drivers (see below) only works after you change the BIOS setting from RAID to AHCI. Otherwise the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers option is not present in the device manager.

So maybe mike_nbr can modify the first post and change the order of those two recommendations? It would probably be helpful for a few people since it took me an hour or so to figure this out.

Thanks&best,
Matt

 

Thanks for the suggestion, done!

 

New owner here (i7, 512gb)

Issue: my machine is restarting after I close the lid. I have it set to sleep, but something is causing it to crash.

Is this related to the issues listed in the first post?

Thank you,

 

I installed the Intel 530 Graphics Beta 15.40.12.4326 driver last week which completely resolved all screen flickering and display driver crashes. For those interested, the link is below but must be manually installed. Otherwise I expect it to be released in full form in the next few weeks which should resolve everyone's issues
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/do...a-Graphics-Driver-for-Windows-7-8-1-10-15-40-

Also, I think the RAID/AHCI setting instructions should be clarified. If you switch from RAID to AHCI without installing the Samsung drivers, it will result in many BSOD. Maybe add a line that this option is only for those willing to find and install the appropriate drivers or troubleshoot the BSODs

 

I tried using the Samsung NVMe driver for AHCI, but on every reboot I would get a "hard drive not installed" error. Note, only on reboots, and not on cold boots. I am now using the standard NVMe driver and I haven't experienced a BSOD.

 

There is a 4331 version driver avaiable at www.station-drivers.com.

 

From comments of others on the Dell forums and my own experience, the coil whine issue is largely due to faulty AC adapters and is resolved after receiving a new one from Dell. Dell also seemed to be aware of this when I called as they pretty quickly offered to send a new one.

 

4331 is also available from Dell on the 9550 support page.

 

I have PM951 512mb M.2 NVMe drive on xps 9550 set on RAID by Dell and I am thinking to perform a clean install, but I'd like to get it booting in NVMe and I read a lot of terrible stories of people don't even able to set it to AHCI: can you point me in the right direction to do the right steps?
appreciate it
thanks

 

This is interesting http://www.jasondunn.com/getting-cu...the-samsung-950-pro-nmve-m-2-ssd-dell-xps-13/

Does anyone know if XPS 15 might have the some problem? Might the power consumption be related to any of the currently known problems?

 

That's how carefully the thermal compound is applied:



No, I didn't smear the compound all over the board to make the picture more dramatic. After cleaning :



Before repasting, when running primes and fur mark at the same time, CPU would throttle straight down to 800MHz with temps in the high 90's almost immediately. Now the gpu throttles way down to 400MHz but CPU stays at 2.8 GHz with temps in the 70's. But throttling is caused by 'power limit' and not thermal flag, it starts even before the temps even hit 90 C. Got to educate myself how those power limits work.

And one of the pads on VRAM, the one that is directly below the heat pipe doesn't even touch it, there is like 1 mm gap. I'll probably do it again and use thicker ones on two chips.

I also covered the gap between the fans and heatsink, looks like large portion of air is being blown back into the chassis.

 

^ wow that is shoddy work. Did Dell under paid their malaysian workers? How can they compete with Apple's premium build if such things is possible out of their factory.

Windows PC forever the Suzie Shanty of Apple wanabes.

 

Several people installed a pm950 pro in their XPS15. It requires perhaps a bios update and of course, use of the right drivers when installing W10 after PM950 pro upgrade.
But it works, so I don't think this is the case with theXPS15.

 

Intel has posted new drivers for the GPU that they claim solve the screen flickering issue a lot of people have reported. I haven't had a flicker since I installed them but they were really intermittent for me anyway. You have to do a manual driver install to install them on the 9550 if you're currently running the Dell version of the drivers (because Intel's installer is locked out from updating "customized" drivers).

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/do...ics-Driver-for-Windows-7-8-1-10-15-40-6th-Gen

 

What do you mean with "manual installation"? I've tried to point out Device Manager at the unzipped folder with the new drivers but this is not sufficient. Can you post step by step? Thanks

 

Hi guys,

I have encountered a problem: everytime my laptop wakes from sleep, it acts like it turns back on from off again. The application states are gone. I have a clean installation of Windows 10.

Is there any specific BIOS setting or power management setting I should be aware of? Thanks.

BTW, the system is extremely unstable without the chipset/Samsung NVMe driver installed. I changed the PM951 into a 950 Pro. It happend for several times that: 1. the disk is lost when installing windows (cannot find disk when selecting partition/freezes during installation); 2. BSOD fir CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED after logging into Windows. I'm not sure which of the 2 drivers stablizes that, but must be one of them. Have you met these problems before?

 

Curiously: I never get "hard drive not installed" errors on reboots.

What I did: I switched to AHCI in bios, booted in safe mode (using MSCONFIG.exe before rebooting to bios), let the MS NVMe driver install itself, rebooted, installed the Samsung NVMe driver for the pm950, rebooted.

b.t.w.: I also upgraded to W10 pro and use bitlocker to protect my data on my PM951 Tb sdd. I only use that PM951 since I have a 84w battery. Bitlocker requires me to enter a password or use a password-flashdrive when (re)booting. But that's okay with me.

 

What thermal compound did you end up using? and that does not look to bad from the factory I have seen way worse from other manufacturers

 

I really doubt it - do you see all those grey blobs sprayed all over the blue mainboard? Yes, this is the stock thermal compound, I guess there was just way too much dumped on the CPU, so much that it splattered all around the component and then it was wiped out (smudges on CPU). I used IC Diamond.

I'm pretty sure the GPU doesn't make full contact with the cooper plate. When running furmark and primes I end up with 850MHz on GPU and 2.2GHz on CPU.(i5). I've read some review and the author was able to maintain higher CPU clock with the same temperature, and that was without re-pasting. I can clearly see that the whole heatsink assembly is visibly lifted above two of VRAM chips, I need to take this thing apart again and figure out a way to to flatten the plate.

 

Yeah, just as I thought, took out the heatsink again after repasting and you can clearly see how pressure is applied to one GPU corner only. All looks good on the CPU. On the factory compound you couldn't really see anything because there was so much of it.

 

Is the issue of gap between dell panel and bezel sorted out ? Any relevant threads on dell forums ? Has dell acknowledged the issue ?

 

That was posted way back by Annihil here. Would be curious as to whether it can simply be pushed back in?

I've avoided pulling edge of bezel towards me when closing lid or adjusting screen forward - to reduce chances of this happening. Always do that using only the aluminum part of the lid.

 

Heard next BIOS revision will likely not be released publicly (1.0.0.14?) - anyone else see this? From what I've read, the BIOS fixed a couple issues (NVMe & CPU Throttling), but created a few new ones in turn. This means no new BIOS in December, and who knows when they'll get it sorted. At least they aren't major issues, just nuisances in terms of reduced battery life and needing to sleep a device when going on and off AC power.

 

Where did you read about this?

 

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-X...HD-InfinityEdge-Notebook-Review.156462.0.html

 

Thanks for the interesting link!

 

Hey there,

I stumbled upon this thread, after hours and hours of Google searching, and need a bit of assistance (if possible). I have a new Dell XPS 9550, which I performed a "clean install" of Windows 10 pro on. I removed the recovery partition, and used the latest image from Microsofts website to install Windows 10.

I am getting random BSOD, with the message "Critical Process Died", which is happening periodically, at random. I cannot replicate it, but am getting it every day, and it's quite a nuisance. I have also downloaded all the drivers from the Dell support page, for this model, to no avail.

Since the previous did not work, I tried downloading each driver I could find manually, (intel, nvidia, etc from their specific sites), also to no avail. I could not find the driver on the dell website for the two devices listed in the photo below:

http://i.imgur.com/hayPT5E.png

I did however install the drivers, by using "Intel Serial IO I2CHost Controller A160" driver from the intel site, i could not find the driver on the dell support site, for my service tag.

- To note, I also downloaded the latest Intel Graphics driver for this mode, and the driver is randomly crashing, and "stopped replying" then recovering.

Please, any assistance to stopping this BSOD, would be very appreciated.

 

Did you do a clean install with the 10586/1511 version? Or with the original 10240 version? The latter version misses some drivers. The 1511 version has all the drivers.

 

You will find they use a type of thermal paste already spread out on the heatsink to save time so it is placed on with a bit more than needed to account for any misalignment. Obviously anyone who knows what they are doing with use a fraction of the paste so temps will improve.

I can only suggest bending the heatpipe between the heatsinks to flatten it out, it may be worth raising this for a service call to replace with a new heatsink. The tech will use your paste if you ask him to.

Have you got a metal ruler that you could use on its side to check the motherboards not warped causing the problem, same for the heatsink. if it isn't 100% flat the springs won't hold it in place.

I bent my 9530 heatsink removing it and had to fix it with a flat ruler as a guide.

 

Sorry, I am doing a clean install, using version 10240.

I will try a clean install using version 1511, and report back, thank you!

Curious, has anyone posted links to current stable manufactured drivers, rather then the Dell released drivers for this laptop??

 

This method of installing the latest Intel display drivers worked for me:
http://www.windowscentral.com/how-install-intel-beta-graphics-drivers-surface

I don't want to be overly optimistic as I've had these flickering display issues for so long and have thought they were fixed before, only for them to return... but so far(1 day) of having installed Intel display driver verison: 15.40.14.64.4352, I have had no flickering.

 

Yes I know, I didn't really care about the amount of paste, everyone does it like that, but the paste was thrown all over the mainboard. I took it apart because I noticed blobs of thermal compound underneath the RAM sticks... You can see them in the picture.

There is no way I would allow any tech to touch it. Somebody posted the pics of his machine after Dell's tech visit, or rather what remained of his laptop. I did already bent it as good as I could, but the real issue is how the heatsink has those extensions over VRAM and they are not flat - which leads to the plate not making full contact with the GPU. I ended up removing thermal pad from the upper two ones and just used thermal paste (and quite a bit of it got squeezed out when I mounted the heat sink back), while leaving 0.5 mm pad on the ones next to the fan. I call it a day, seems to be ok, temps are fine and no throttling.

 

So far i get no major issue after 2 weeks of use. Only silly issue i got was on first boot, it fails at undetected HD...i had to manually go into bios and change to UEFI boot. /rolleyes.
That is how Dell wants to ship their brand new laptop to consumers....

 

Well, did a clean install of Windows 10, build 1511 and am still getting random BSOD's (Critical_Process_Died). All drivers are installed and I have installed the latest nvidia and intel display drivers from their respected site.

Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

 

Pyru, sorry for your troubles.
The latest NVidia drivers (361.43) can cause a BSOD, I have seen several reports. I also got BSOD's using Adobe Photoshop (Critical Process Died).
Therefore I installed the standard Dell NVidia driver (an older version).
Have no BSOD since that. Hope that helps!

 

Thank you for your help! I just realized I did not update my bios to the latest 1.0.7, after doing this, the system seems to be running more stable. Has anyone reported that after a bios update, you do not get BSOD's?

I'll continue to use the system and if I get another BSOD, I will downgrade my NVIDIA driver to the stable release from the XPS 9550 Dell site driver list.

 

Pyru, I would like to ask where you got the drivers when you did the clean install? I'm looking to do a clean install too but am still trying to figure out the proper procedures.

 

I know what you mean, 1st repairs the guy was polite enough to leave me the parts and collect the next day as he lived a mile away, he was paid to do bugger all and he liked that.
The new tech was surprised I had the laptop apart ready for the new fan, I let him fit it but did cringe at his style, 2nd time he came I took the fan off him and did it myself!

I did mention this when dell wanted to replace my mainboard in the 9530 as the fan had started to make a noise again and they offered to replace the laptop with a 9550.

I do not trust 3rd party techs as I doubt they have any real Dell training. At least I got manufacturer training on Toshiba laptops where they had 10 current popular models to rebuild, BenQ offered no training as they knew we did Toshiba so that was good enough for them!

 

Hey,

I had the BSOD with the error code "CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED" even with latest BIOS 1.0.7, and to get rid of them I had to install the Samsung NVMe drivers instead of the native drivers that come with Windows. The link to the Samsung driver should be on one of the first pages of this thread. After installing that, no more BSOD.

Best,
Matt

 

I will be importing this to India so I just want to be sure if dell sorted this issue.Watching the owners thread and the list of issues thread for now

Sent from my SM-N9100 using Tapatalk

 

Sending back the laptop for repair/replacement is a waste of money and time. I would suggest to take the safer route if possible.

EDIT: I.e., 4K over FHD

 

Haris163 did find out: I was just able to update the BIOS to 01.01.15 using the update driver software option from the device manager.

My reply:
Nice find, thanks for the update.

I noticed 4 firmware update:
1) system bios update (I think that was the text, since I started writing things down after I noticed their were 4 updates);
2) Intel ME firmware update;
3) Main TI PC 0
4) EC Bios

Anyone knows what 1..4 means??

I can confirm speedcapping issue is gone (i7, 4k, 1tb ssd, 16gb).
Processor SST is (still) not available.
TPM still disabled.

Geekbench gives same results running on battery and AC, both ways peaks multicore at 3,3 Ghz and 3,5 Ghz singlecore.

 

Hooray, downloaded toe 01.01.15 update and confirmed that there is no more stupid throttling of the CPU's

 

FCLK went up from 800 to 1000mhz.

 

After a clean install, BIOS update and latest driver installations, I am still experiencing BSOD's. I will try to use the Samsung NVMe drivers, and see if that alleviates the problem. I do not see where the link to the Samsung NVMe driver is though.

Thanks,
Pyru

 

Looking for this link?
http://ssd.samsungsemi.com/ecomobile/ssd/update15.do?fname=/Samsung_NVMExpress_Driver_rev10.zip

Perhaps I mentioned it before: nVidia driver 361.43 causes BSOD by some programs. F.i. Adobe photoshop. I reverted to the latest Dell Nvidia driver. That solved the problem.

 

If you remove sniffer_gpu from the program files folder of Photoshop, the problem of BSOD is also solved

 

Thank you.

Another few questions, to anyone who can answer:

1) Is there an alternate driver for the wi-fi card, rather then the Dell provided driver?
2) Is there a list of drivers someone compiled yet, that are non-dell provided?
3) To maximize the potential of the SSD, what are recommendations? I am not too familiar with RAID, etc etc.
4) I was not familiar with the incompatiblity / lack of support there was for 4k UHD displays, any recommendations on what zoom percentage, display settings etc to getting it to look as best it can (lots of apps are very small!).
5) After two complete fresh re-installs, using FireFox, latest drivers for both the intel gpu, and the nvidia gpu, i am getting artifacts and white areas of the browser (hovering over the icons and stuff, makes them re-appear, or minimizing and maximizing the browser temporarily fixes it).

Thanks,
Pyru