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

If you once had this issue this mean your bios is faulty as mine, reseting BIOS default wont completely waive the issue it is just temporary workarround.

 

Good god. I set my laptop into hibernation and left it for a couple of hours. After turning it back on I had a black screen without Dell logo.

I could go into bios via F2 and I saw a black screen with a small part of the BIOS (similar to the figure posted by ArisJ, but without that noise).

I could fix it by applying this procedure:
http://www.dell.com/support/Article/us/en/6099/SLN284985

When in BIOS press: Alt + F. Enter. Esc. Enter.
This resets the BIOS to standard settings. Afterwards you laptop should work again. Hope that helps somebody out there.

 

Just like I said before, probably if you once had this issue this mean your bios is faulty as mine, reseting BIOS back to default wont completely waive the issue it is just a temporary bypass.

Bommel87 could you do something for me?

There is only one way to find out if dell 9550 is affected with faulty Bios issue (this applies to anyone who would like to check if their laptop has stable BIOS).

1. Go to your BIOS by pressing F2 during a boot.
2. Make these changes:
(don't worry you can reset everything back after).
3. SupportAssist System Resolution - Set "Auto OS Recovery" to OFF.
4. Virtualization Support - Set "Virtualization" and "VT for Direct" to OFF.
5. Post Behavior - Set "Fastboot" to MINIMAL, and uncheck "Numlock Enable" checkbox.
6. Performance - Uncheck "C-States Control" checkbox.
7. System Configuration - Under USB/Thunderbold uncheck "enable Thunderbolt Ports", uncheck "Allways Allow Dell Docks", uncheck "Enable Thunderbolt Boot Support", set "Security level to - No Security"

Save and exit.

If your screen becomes dark again - this means your BIOS is affected with faulty BIOS from manufacturer.

Now turn off your laptop by pressing and holding a Power button until it goes off.
Turn it On again and start taping F2.
It will bring you to your bios with only a piece of horizontal screen visible and remaining parts will be black.
Now press Alt + F. Enter. Esc. Enter. (this combination reverts your BIOS to default state).
Your computer will reboot back to normal this time.

 

First things first: I will not trigger this problem again on purpose.

BUT: I had some similar BIOS settings that caused it. I did not use the settings 3,4, and 6. I had set settings 5 and 7, which might be related to the trigger of the problem.
Maybe the laptop cannot perform Minimal fastboot if you meddle with the thunderbolt settings. I could even conceive that EVERY laptop out there is affected. But typically no one combines these settings.

 

It's Thunderbolt: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/19668126
Only one post there for one month, so it didn't get any attention. If more people want to have Thunderbolt turned off and complain, Dell will certainly notice it and fix it.

 

Good to know. I will just leave it as it is.

 

My oh my. This laptop features a nest of bugs.

Found another one:
If you deactivate the AHCI/RAID controller (which I thought is a valid approach if you only use the NVME M2 slot), the system will not wake up reliably from hibernation and sleep. And IF it does, the keyboard won't work.

-> leave controller at AHCI

 

Well that's not a bug, that's you not knowing what the hell you are doing! Like 90% of the problems people have...

 

Geez, I bought this (delivery 2/17/2016) from excellent critical reviews but this forum is scaring me into regretting it haha

Looking forward to my first 4K screen, though!

 

So true.

 

The SATA controller has nothing to do with the installed M2 SSD (which is PCI-express, not SATA). So there should not be any issue to deactivate it. It is running fine if you do, it is just that sleep/hibernation does not work anymore.

 

Bad news... my xps 15 9550, literally died last night in the middle of surfing the web. just a quick flash on the screen and it powered off.

Now i can't even power it back on. The power button flashes for one second but nothing happens. I've already tried taking the battery out, and powering it on. Taken both memory sticks out, taken the 950 pro out, and tried multiple methods of starting with D+Power

I think the MOBO is dead. I found a few threads mentioning this issue.

I'm calling dell PRO support, but not sure if i want to keep this laptop anymore. Its over the 30 days but we should not have these kind of problems and expect them to send us a refurb unit, or refurb parts to replace this unit.

 

did u rip out the notebook to install the 950 pro? and now you are complaining the laptop is dead? i am not sure if dell is even oblige to repair it for u

 

Considering opening the laptop doesn't invalidate the warranty and the HDD are easily accessible I doubt and Dell tech would bother questioning, chance is the OP knows more than the techs from my experience.

 

I'm having BSOD Critical process died when gaming. Do you guys have any idea of what is happening?

 

Ripped out? You mean taking out 12 screws to slide in a simple stick. I installed the 950 pro since day one, and the mobo is randomly dead after 40 days of use. I was surfing the web, when the screen randomly powered off and stopped responding.

Technician also confirmed the battery was 100% healthy. Battery indicators were still working. They also mentioned the laptop should of powered up without the battery and in my case it did not.

They will be replacing my motherboard tomorrow, and they offered to send out my laptop which i declined. They also mentioned if they were unable to fix the device, they will order a new one to replace my current unit.

also.. don't get me started on Dell Techs... he asked me what the 950 Pro is and why i didn't install a standard SSD in the 2.5" slot. He also said to install 2x16GBs of memory so "my machine can run faster"...

 

Don't worry, some guys are pretty agressive here. (instead of contributing constructively)

 

So your one month old XPS will get a refurbed mobo. That's the worse practice among these companies. It should not be allowed by law to place refurbished parts into a device younger than 1 year.

 

I would probably call back within a couple of days and say the problems returned just to get it replaced with a new one

Wish me luck my 3rd new 9550 arrives in a few hours

 

Since the new bios update from 1.1.10 and 1.1.15 I've been experiencing BSODs or sometimes the screen would randomly turn off unable to wake up while the laptop is still running and this happens atleast once a day usually while web browsing. I have the latest drivers all installed and I reset bios to defaults every time I upgrade the bios. I just don't understand how a laptop can be released with so many bugs. I'm wondering if changing the operating system may fix the issue to something like Windows 7/8.1. Something is not working correctly between operating system and hardware for this kind of instability to be occurring daily without error codes.

 

Windows 10 10586.0; SM951 256GB NVMe M.2; BIOS 1.1.19; Raid mode with latest Intel RST drivers updated.
I'm getting "Critical Process died" only when "Surfind Web" this time. Issue persist even with fresh Windows installed and Raid controller mode set. Sick of this crap...

Note:
- With AHCI mode set - I get "Critical Process died" on more than one occasions, this includes playing games + surfing web.
- With Raid mode set - "Critical Process died" only occurs when surfing web.

On top of that I was also getting these BSOD:
- "DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION" - which I solved by disabling automatic driver updates.
- "Kernel Security Check Failure" - apparently got it just once, have no idea with this.

 

Well just found out that WIndows 10 doesn't download and update drivers automatically. Literally every Intel driver listed under System Devices in Device Manager needed updating. Anyone else updates their system device drivers? Lets see what happens from here I guess.

 

Install WhoCrashed & see if it offers more info.

I also found mine BSOD with the new Nvidia drivers, I have had to roll back 2 versions to fix this and avoid the Adobe photoshop BSOD from the previous version.

 

I am lost for words.
The replacement laptop has the identical 2 marks under the glass, by identical I mean the exact same place under the glass!
this is obviously a manufacturing fault with the panels and I have no idea how they pass inspection.

 

I tried my best to generate MiniDump file upon a crash, however windows is not creating a dump for me...

Inside startup and recovery:
- Write an event to the system log ENABLED
- Automatically restart DISABLED
- Small memory dumb (256 KB)
- Directory %SystemRoot%\Minidump

Do you know which startup services must be ensured as running to get Memory dump to work?
- Error reporting service (RUNNING)
Is there other services required? I've some services disabled, but doubt if they may cause it.

 

Can you take a photo and upload it here? We all can compare your marks with ours.
(If you are referring to "Backlight bleeding" issue which in a real words means Backlight Diods are loose and causes bright spots in lcd)

I took this image from general Dell 9550 forums, Eye witness "Backlight Bleed"...

 

I've downloaded "Intel(R) Serial IO Driver " from dell drivers and found that only two of the listed chipsets are being installed on my machine.

Intel claims:
Verify the following devices should be listed and not yellow banged. If not, the driver is not installed correctly.
Intel(R) Serial IO I2C Host Controller
Intel(R) Serial IO SPI Host Controller
Intel(R) Serial IO UART Host Controller
Intel(R) Serial IO GPIO Host Controller

However after installing IO Drivers I found one active,
Intel(R) Serial IO I2C Host Controller - A160 amd A161

SPI, UART and GPIO is missing entirely. Couldn't find yet what does these stand for but If I'm right they are not enabled by the Dell 9550 BIOS.

Also Intel download center does not offer "Serial IO drivers" for Skylake processor, it only have Braswell SoC Platform drivers.

What also doubts me is should we use stock Windows 10 Serial IO drivers which is latest in version or Official from dell which is previous version.
- Intel Serial IO which comes with Windows 10 - 9/21/2015 30.63.1519.7
- Intel Serial IO from Dell.com - June 2015

 

[

 

Happened today while surfing the web with the newest NVidia driver. Rolling back to 359.06

 

1, My Dell XPS 15 9550 with a Samsung PM951 1TB was stable until I upgraded to a Samsung 950 Pro 512GB. I installed the 950 as AHCI and did a clean install of Windows 10 Home (1511). Then I began to receive BSOD "Critical process died" every few hours. I updated Intel and NVidia drivers (BIOS 19) but still got same BSOD error. I download and installed "Samsung_NVMExpress_Driver_rev11". Appears that this driver fixed the BSOD issue. The system is stable again.

2. The system using the Samsung 950 Pro is pleasantly more responsive than with the PM951 1TB, perhaps 30% faster I/O. I'm on the system all day and really appreciate any significant performance improvements.

3. Previously, the system had the "NVMe related SSD Sleep bug" where the performance out of sleep became significantly slower, perhaps 30% slower I/O. The bug disappeared when I switched from RAID to AHCI.

4. I moved the PM951 1TB to a Dell XPS 13 9350 system. The PM951 1TB (RAID) is significantly faster than system's previous PM951 256GB drive (RAID), perhaps 30%. The 9350 doesn't exhibit the "NVMe related SSD Sleep bug" in RAID.

5. I bought the 9550 as a BestBuy "open box" for 10% reduction. It was described as, and received in, excellent condition.

6. I bought the 9350 as a manufacturer refurb on Ebay for 30% reduction (including no sales tax). It too was in excellent condition.

Both systems are stable and have no issues. I'm quite pleased with the present state of the systems.

 

I fixed it by rolling back the NVidia driver. And I was having SSD bad performance but I fixed it by clean installing windows and not installing any storage driver. I let windows update do its thing

 

Your laptop crashes (BSOD) due to the sniffer.exe program somewhere in the Adobe directory. That program has trouble with 2 videocards combined with some nVidia drivers. I deleted the sniffer.exe, problem solved. Alternatively you can rename the program. I use the latest nVidia drivers.

 

I don't have Adobe programs, but rolling back the driver seems to have solved the problem

 

Sorry, right? reply to the wrong post!

 

nah... just happened again

 

Your laptop crashes (BSOD) due to the sniffer.exe program somewhere in the Adobe directory. That program has trouble with 2 videocards combined with some nVidia drivers. I deleted the sniffer.exe, problem solved. Alternatively you can rename the program. I use the latest nVidia drivers.

 

I am referring to what could be mistaken for dead pixels, the replacement for this issue arrived today with the identical defects. I just don't know what the hell it is under that glass

 

No that was the previous nvidia driver hence me skipping back 2 versions.

This crash was a directX related while browsing with chrome!

 

I have about the same setup. But, if I restart Windows, there is a delay of about 30 seconds before the Dell logo appears and the system starts. This does not happen for a cold boot.
Do you see this behaviour, too? Didn't find any BIOS setting to change that delay.

 

I received my XPS 9550 in November and then replaced SSD on M2 port by a Samsung SM951 512go to install OS (not PM951).
In AHCI mode, just reinstalled windows and never had any BSOD, it is fast like hell!!!

Games, surfing or whatever

 

It can't handle this "critical process died" BSOD anymore. I'm going back to RAID to see if it fixes it.

 

Well after 40 minutes on the phone to Dell after yesterdays email they tried pushing me for a full refund (18 months into my 3 year warranty)
I did consider it but explained that the 2 faulty systems I have here shouldn't be counted towards the "give them a full refund to get rid of them" 3 systems then refund clause as they both arrived defective.
In the end they agreed to send out a final system that I am waiting for confirmation of.
If this does indeed arrive with the same screen problem I will happily take my £1600 back and look for an alternative.

I get the feeling the BNX systems are sat on the shelf ready to go and the home versions are built to order. Lets hope for a good screen this time

 

Any specific task you do that gets you BSOD?

 

browsing the web ( i use edge), listening to spotify, gaming. No matter what im doing it just happens! Now im on RAID, lets se if it happens again

 

Is this coming from PM951? Any benchtest to share?

 

Wow ok this thread is eye opening. I was planning on getting an XPS 15 this week, but this has put me off. Could anyone briefly give me a comparison between the Dell XPS 15 and this Asus: http://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/N551VW-FW238T-ASUS-N551VW-FW238T_1829315.html

Will it perform just as well as the Dell? Are there any serious issues with Asus laptops / that specific model?

Thanks!

 

SM951 is a new model 8Gb/S and different from PM951
What kind of bench do you want?

 

I'd appreciate a Crystal DiskMark64 benchmark if you've got the time.

 

What was the SSD on your system before you installed the SM951? Just want to see if its worth upgrading my PM951 to 950 Pro or SM951

CrystalDiskMark on 50MB and 1GB on cold boot.

Thanks