Dell XPS 15 (Skylake) 9550 Owner's Lounge

BSODs won't go away

Hello fellow notebookreview forum users, I got my xps 15 9550 dec '15 and have since had problems. There was only a short period of time where seemingly no BSODs would occur or the system wouldn't hang, but I don't seem to be able to go there again (driver wise). Over the holidays this forum has helped me a lot and I was able to at least use my new machine. Not anymore though. At this point I'm wondering if anyone - that has the same machine as I do - has a working configuration in daily use.

Specs: i7, 16GB RAM, 4K, 512GB pci-e only model
BIOS: latest .19 with standard settings apart from boot sequence (RAID). I reset them once .19 was released.

I've been running several clean installs (my org's install / the download MS supplies) with different driver configs. Until the day before yesterday I ran all latest drivers and everything was kinda smooth. Then the BSODs (critical process died, unexpected store exception) returned. As I said before, I can't seem to be able to go back to a driver config that works and stays that way.
Today I did a fresh install (first one on BIOS .19 using MS download image) and the first thing that happened while cleaning out MS bloatware was... a BSOD (right after windows had installed the intel HD 530 drivers ini the background). I have since continued to install all the drivers from the dell support site and have not had another BSOD (fingers crossed). But: When I returend from a short meeting just ten minutes ago the screen was black and I couldn't wake it up and had to power it off/on.

I'm pretty lost and would be glad to provide driver version numbers and more if that helps. Maybe someone with the same machine has a working config...

Thanks in advance.

P.S.: whocrashed won't help me since no dump files are being / can be created...

 

@Raymond Dijkstra Is window redrawing (resizing/moving a browser for example) slow for you too?

 

No, did not have that issue, just the mentioned issues with firefox. Did not have them with IE or Edge.

 

Okay. Different problems then - on top of all the bluescreening the redrawing of windows seems to be veeeery slow here... (video adapter is in max. performance mode)

 

It will head up to 40gb over time m8, on the plus side I get no BSOD but I did use an older nvidia driver due to it crashing when opening photoshop and the latest nvidia just caused random BSOD.

 

Another BSOD (critical process died) during normal use.

Installed Intel RST + f6 driver manually now. Lets see if it helps.

Current driver setup: Everything but dell bloatware from dell homepage + intel rst / f6 driver for raid + nvidia 353.54 (windows installed this one)

Ran crystal disk mark and scores are in line with earlier benchmarks and what's being posted on these forums.

 

Try to install the latest beta from Intel and see it if helps with 'black screens'. Check Raymod's post

 

Thanks, so the "black screen" thing refers to the laptop not waking up?

 

I don't think it's just about waking up, I've seen the screen turns off in the middle of something. The only way to bring it back was to reboot the system. It doesn't happen often, so I installed updated driver to see if it helps.

 

Funny enough, I didn't have that problem before my latest fresh install. Waiting for next BSOD.

 

I have had this issue since last 2/8, disabling Nvidia card in Device Manager can fix it. Dell support said it's a hardware issue and will replace my motherboard, but since more and more people have reported the exact same issue, it looks more and more like a software issue rather than a hardware one. Hope Dell can fix it before the dell technical come and replace my motherboard which is in backorder.

 

That's interesting, my Dell Venue Pro 11 does this very often.

 

For those of you getting "black screens" is this when you turn on the computer? If so try hitting Windows + P to see if a blue bar appears on the right side of the screen. I had this behavior in Windows 10 and it seemed to be related to one of two things:

1 - having an external display hooked up to an HDMI adapter
2 - disconnecting the external display and/or power adapter when shutting down before the computer had powered off

One of those two scenarios led to the computer taking an extremely long time to power off and when turning back on I would get a black screen with a mouse cursor that responded to some Windows commands but ultimately required a hard power off.

 

Chiming in because I had the same problem you did. Unfortunately, I didn't find a solution. I sent the laptop in to the depot, where Dell replaced the SSD and logic board (as well as the LCD panel and keyboard), and it started BSOD'ing again on a clean install when it came back. I just got them to agree to issue a refund.

I hope we're just a vocal minority, but there are enough reports of these issues that I have to believe Dell really dropped the ball with their drivers. I needed a laptop for both work and personal use. There's no way I can trust this machine with my work documents.

 

Anyone experience issues with the 470-ABQN adapter? I have Windows 7 x64 Pro installed with all drivers detected in Device Manager. From time to time when I plug in the adapter it locks up the system and I have to perform a forced shutdown. I noticed this issue happens when the laptop wakes up from sleep. I haven't been able to reproduce the problem when doing a cold boot.

 

They just delayed my 9550 by 2 days, comes the 19th now. Ordered on the 4th haha.

 

Have you tried the latest beta driver from Intel? nvidia card does rendering for specific applications but Intel HD is ultimately responsible for displaying the things. Again, it happens rarely, that why it's hard to tell if newer driver fixes it.

I don't use external monitor, but it I once tried connecting one and using it for a while. I'm wondering if that old monitor can be deleted from the settings somehow.And yes, I'll try Windows + P if it happens again. Thank you.

 

Well nearly two months after ordering my original laptop, my replacement is coming tomorrow. Just wondering what are the recommend drivers and downloads I should get from the dell product support website? Should I go ahead and get all of them?
Thanks!

 

Is there a shortcut or anything that allows me to just turn off the screen without going into standby?

For example when I'm listinging to music while on battery, I think I could gain some batterylife when turning off screen manually instead of waiting until my screen goes black by itself. Usually notebooks have an fn key for that scenario, but this one seems not.

Adjusting the power plans is not option for me.

 

Absolutely. I will try to get a refund. Since I got it via my organization there might be an angle...

 

fn f8

 

i just got mine its awesome.

did clean install to 500 gb m2 mx200

my ssd is going way slower than i expect. anyone think theres a setting i need to change?

 

Is your bios set to RAID or AHCI?


Sent from my iPhone 7 using Tapatalk

 

it's set to raid

I started with the 32 gb as a buffer
And hdd
Now I still have the hdd as a data and a data m2 mx200 as windows

 

There were two people here with same similar setup with the same m2 ssd

Can either both of you test your speed and tell me the program and results

I have hdtune results of 300 read

Whereas it should be 500

Its not hot either.

 

Try changing it and see if your speeds change. Also do you have Intel RST driver installed?


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Doesn't boot when I change it to ahci

 

You will have to reinstall Windows just on SSD without the 32gb M.2.

But first try this
Go back to raid, install Intel RST drivers (available via Dell download page) and retest your speeds if they don't change do full install in AHCI mode


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My 4K screen seems to have at least 9 or 10 dead pixels devided into at least four clusters around on the screen. I contacted Dell, and they say they are going to send someone to replace the screen. I'm just wondering if they'll think it's not a problem when the pixels are so small?

The pictures i sent Dell:

Spoiler: Pictures

 

I would be very cautions as to who will be replacing your screen and make sure they have the anti static mat + ground them selves. Sometimes these techs will actually do more harm. If the screw up, I would just ask for new laptop.


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Well, me after successfully utilizing good speed with AHCI + 950 Pro + Samsung NVme without any Intel RST for a couple of weeks I ran a quick SSD benchmark and...
I'm back to some pathetic speeds of 800/700 read/write.

 

What were you getting before?


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2000+/1000+...

Not sure what happened, but it sucks and makes me wonder..

 

picture 3&4 isn't dead pixels that is part of the manufacturing issue I rejected my last 2 laptops over.

fyi the bit under the letter E is a speck of dust but the other 2 marks were identical on 2 laptops.

DSC02715 by Gonzo Holland, on Flickr

 

Hello everyone,
I'm thinking of getting a XPS 15" (9550) FHD, and I read a while ago that there were issues like somewhat short battery life and throttling issues. I've now read that those issues been resolved (or improved) with BIOS-updates and what-more (from some users and from Notebookcheck ( http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-15-9550-Core-i7-FHD-Notebook-Review.158875.0.html), and I'm wondering about if it's a good buy now? Are many still experiencing throttling and low battery life or are the issues fixed? Appreciate help!

 

I am also curious to know


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I have 1TB PM951 and my tests so far have been pretty consistent with scores coming in around these # under both Raid and ACHI modes. This is the first time I've seen in go into 1700s but generally it's been at high 1600s.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 5.1.2 x64 (C) 2007-2016 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1757.681 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 938.068 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 609.007 MB/s [148683.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 485.308 MB/s [118483.4 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 1278.642 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 947.226 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 39.564 MB/s [ 9659.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 185.011 MB/s [ 45168.7 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [C: 14.4% (136.0/941.3 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2016/02/17 18:35:02
OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 10586] (x64)

 

Are these scores in AHCI or raid? I will be installing my 950 pro on the weekend and Im worried that AHCI could affect performance.

 

Nothing fixed in my book. USB 3.1 (USB via USB C, no matter if USB 2 or 3.0) is unusable with audio interfaces. The internal sound card can still kill the speakers and repeatedly fires up a 25% CPU consuming HD audio background task. And it's too stupid to switch to a different EQ when you plug in phones. Still on Speedstep, the reason to buy Skylake is SpeedShift and that is nowhere to be seen. Removing the power supply causes an immediate drop in CPU speed. If you put some load on it it will slowly rise back to AC speed, but that takes up to 30 seconds. The IGZO panels suffer from bleeding at the edge when viewing under low light conditions, which is not a must but caused by sloppy manufacturing. The bigger battery is still not available to update the less power hungry FHD model.

If you buy this you will have a nice laptop, but far from perfect. And with my experience in Dell for many years most of this **** will never be fixed.

 

AHCI was super-fine for me when I first popped it in and used migration software. But I was bored yesterday (after couple of weeks using AHCI setup) and to mu surprise speeds went totally down.

I even quickly re-installed windows yesterday and just ran some benchmarks on clean system - still very same speeds.

So much hassle to get it working properly

 

I wouldn't recommend getting one.

 

AHCI using the samsung 950 pro driver.

 

Noticed any lower speeds after using Windows for couple of weeks? I'm backing up the whole disk today and will try to play around and see what's the deal.

Samsung magician says my link speed for pcie express is 1x and max is 4x... Is this normal?

I guess it's not as for a moment it was 2x, now back to 1x ... Anyone can help?

 

powersaving is kicking in and dropping the bandwidth during idle.
Speeds are fine so long as trim is active, try trimming via c drive properties then hit optimize and see when it last ran. run it and reboot then shutdown and startup to make sure any flagged bits are wiped then test again.

 

Doesn't work here.
I don't have another display connected or something. I just want to turn off the screen.

 

Powersaving... Well it stays ar 1x no matter what. I will check the trim, but im pretty sure it's this 1x link width causing all the problems.

 

Should turn it off without the other screen

 

I have to be honest. I completely disagree with this. I think this laptop is amazing. Are there some issues yes, but for the people that aren't looking to completely mod or get the absolute max speeds this thing is a beast for gaming for its size. It's lightweight, very portable, nice screens (I have the FHD, but have used the 4K as well). The bigger battery thing, just but the spec with the bigger battery!!! I started off with a i7, 8gb, 256gb, 51w FHD and it was all I really needed. I was issued a refurb, not because it was a bad laptop but because the depot messed something up after I blew my speaker out and ended up with a i7, 16gb, 512gb, 84w, FHD.

This is my 4th XPS I think. And I have had other gaming and business class laptops in the past and you can't get better performance for the form factor or better components right now. There are a few that are similar but all have draw backs when compared to this.

Remember more people post their problems here than what they found they like about their products.

My vote is go ahead and buy it. If you have any issues send it to the depot or return it for a replacement.

 

Well, found the issue. I downgraded firmware from newest one to 01.01.15 - no more slowdowns, link 4x

 

I just received my XPS 15 from the dell outlet yesterday. I love the fit and finish of the laptop and the screen. I really want to love this laptop. However, I read about the many issues and still decided to take the risk despite all of this.

My experience so far:

THE BAD
-BSOD on first restart
-Factory Reset
-Downloaded all new drivers
-Noticed one dead pixel located at the bottom left of the screen (maybe dust?) Two inches from the left and bottom. It is quite annoying now that I know it is there.
-Battery life is still questionable ( Need more time)
-Whine from the charger brick (Do not think it is the laptop)

So, what do you guys think I should do about the dead pixel. Should I get someone out to replace it before the 30 day time expires or request another one that may have even more issues hardware wise?
Also, do you guys know if you can add the extended warranty and accidental protection after purchase?