Dell XPS 15 (Skylake) 9550 Owner's Lounge

This is what I see in my device manager.

Universal Serial Bus controller
- ASMedia USB Root Hub (1.16.32.1)
- ASMedia USB3.0 eXtensible Host Controller (1.16.32.1)
- Generic USB Hub (1.16.32.1)
- Generic USB Hub (1.16.32.1)
- Intel(R) USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller - 1.0 (Microsoft) (10.0.10586.0)
- USB Composite Device (10.0.10586.0)
- USB Composite Device (10.0.10586.0)
- USB Composite Device (10.0.10586.0)
- USB Mass Storage Device (10.0.10586.0)
- USB Root Hub (xHCI) (10.0.10586.0)

 

I disagree. After a fresh install of Windows 10, with the latest drivers and .19 firmware (Factory default immediately after flashing), AHCI mode with no Intel RST driver, my system is 100% stable. Cpu thermals are top notch, idle between 28 and 32c and quickly back there after peak performance, with stock voltage and no repaste.

This is a great laptop if you have the patience and persistence to get all the drivers installed correctly.

 

Weird, I have the same ones as you including version (except I only have the one Intel, not the whole list of composite devices underneath but I suspect this is what you've plugged in the XPS itself)...
But none of the USB devices I've plugged in are triggering anything other than charging or powering up...

Is the Ethernet adapter listed under the network section?

 

I've got a strange issue. If i'm playing audio (through speakers or headphones) and change the screen brightness, the audio starts to crackle. Does any of you recognize this problem? Or is there something wrong with my system?

 

Sounds familiar...

 

Just tried Linux Mint (since Ubuntu really doesn't wan't to boot), here no disortion of the sounds. Apparently Windows is to blame

 

There is a firefox add in that allows you to switch from HTML-5 to Youtube format (fkash?).

 

Hi xps users,

I'm about to purchase a refurb XPS 15 (FHD, i5, 32g+1tb) on ebay, but I'm a little worried because of numerous QC issues that are reported on the internet. I really want to buy this laptop, but I don't want to mess around with a defect unit out of the box. So is this true that Dell's QC is horrible and I'm likely to get another defect unit? I just wanna know your personal experiences. Thanks!

 

It's hit and miss. I am waiting. For 4th replacement from Dell. If you buy that refurb, I am pretty sure you won't be able to exchange it.


Sent from my iPhone 7 using Tapatalk

 

Really? I've heard that ebay sellers are authorized dell resellers and the machine itself comes with the standard Dell 1-year warranty.. I hope that it's not true.

 

Well I doubt it unless it's a big store. But I am betting this is someone trying to unload they're laptop. That's all.


Sent from my iPhone 7 using Tapatalk

 

I don't have anything plugged directly into the XPS other than the TB15 dock. However some of these are from the things I have plugged into the TB15 dock like USB Mass Storage Device. Not really sure what those 3 USB Composite Devices are. I do have Logitech K800 and Performance MX mouse hooked up through 1 unifying USB controller on the back of my TB15 dock.

Under Network adapters this is what I have.
Network adapters
- Bluetooth Device (Personal Area Network)
- Bluetooth Device (RFCOMM Protocol TDI)
- Dell Wireless 1830 802.11ac
- Realtek USB GbE Family Controller

 

I think it will be hit or miss on if you'll get one with issue or not.

My personal experience, I purchased brand new i7, 16gb RAM, 1TB PCIe SSD & 4k sealed box from a dealer on eBay for 30% less (more discount if you factor in tax) than Dell's price and I have not found hardly any issue that I would want to exchange my unit for. Other than the fact that it sounds like Dell started to ship faster performing 1TB PCIe SSD drives recently I do not have any regrets. My unit has full Dell warranty until March 15, 2017.

Those refurbished units on eBay started to appear shortly after I purchased mine otherwise I may have considered one of those refurbished units with next day onsite warranty for couple hundred less. Buying through these eBay dealers will limit your ability to return the unit probably only to that dealer unless Dell isn't able to fix your unit under warranty which at that time Dell may offer you a replacement unit.

 

You must be haluscinating. Read post 1404, two above yours. Everyone reporting bugs has no clue, this laptop just is a dream and does everything correctly...

[/Sarcasm off]

 

Monitor setting up
Lid can be set up not to turn off/sleep upon closing in both Windows 10 and 8. While it always causes turning off the lid, which is just the right behavior.

Yesterday I tried to connect my XPS 15 to TV via HDMI cable. Well, that was damn confusing for me because of screen resolution switching issues and changing between active monitors by pressing fn+f8. Turning off lid and keeping TV displaying was rather hard task. Next time I would prefer using wireless connection, which performs it in a moment.

 

Well if you have Broadcom wireless adapter good luck with that...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/new-xps-15-9550-and-wireless-display-problem.788491/

Its always tricky connecting screens with different resolutions and especially different scaling settings. In general, you need to set projection mode to second screen only and then restart the computer, this will do do trick.

 

Okay so I tried removing all traces of the TB15 Thunderbolt Dock, then reinstall the ASMedia and Realtek drivers but after re-connecting the dock I have an unknown device listed... In addition to this unknown device I have the ASMedia host controller listed under
And still no Ethernet and none of the usb ports doing anything else than charging...
Any idea what the next steps should be? Is my dock defective?

See attached pictures

 

Well, ok. I've actually followed pretty much this entire thread and i'm aware of all the problems this beautiful machine has. My xps, however, has after a clean installation and latest drivers installed no problems at all. So I was just wondering if this problem occurs often. If so i'll switch to an usb sound card

 

A tip for everyone who hates the fact that text in windows appears blurry (like in the screenshot @turt):
http://windows10_dpi_blurry_fix.xpexplorer.com/
Yeah the website looks horrible, but it works perfectly!

 

There's a sticky post over on the Dell forums (laptop section) from an employee giving their current proper driver install sequences. Scroll down to find the 9550 sequence. It's slightly different than the sequence from the dock manual. Some are having success with it; most others have not. My particular issue is video to external monitor cutting out on DP or mini DP. This also cuts out anything else attached to the dock. If I don't have video connected, everything is (mostly) stable.

 

I just purchased one with (FHD/i5/32gb+1TB) specification!
I'm planning to upgrade ram+HDD with 16gb and 850 evo m.2 SSD + my old 500gb HDD when it arrives.
Do I need to change any bios setting (raid to ahci maybe?)?

 

Thanks for the tip, I'll head over there and report how it went...

For anyone else interested, here's the sequence, taken from http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/19677047

 

Using Chromecast is a trick?

 

Yes, Raid is only required if you are using the 32GB cache. Change to AHCI and do the clean install with only the m.2 drive connected then connect the SATA drive afterwards.

 

Thanks - thats a useful tip as the blurry text is awful, but I can't help but think Microsoft should have fixed this by now - its not as if they don't have the resources to do so or had it working in previous operating systems...

 

So I've spent time uninstalling all drivers and devices of my computer, went through the full reinstallation procedure rebooting between each step.

Result? Exactly the same **** again!


This thing must be defective, that's the only reason I can think of...

 

I doubt it is defective, more like windows being a twat. Only option I See is to backup and reinstall windows, a fresh start.
I had an issue with a saitek joystick, found an article that said you needed to install it as a generic USB and then the drivers would install.

I have not read back through the thread but do you have an option to unzip/unpack the drivers maybe with 7zip and find an inf file to force the install?

 

I can tell, that sound in this laptop sometimes perform really cool. Like when you watch a film in full screen it is a feeling that the sound comes directly from it. mtv site has some music video that sound cool on this acoustic.

 

If you've been to Dell Support and downloaded & installed all the drivers for your Tag number and its still an unknown device, try -

Right click on the unknown device in Device Manager/Details and post up its 'friendly name' value if you can find it - it may help to find the right driver for this.

 

How common is the headphone jack issue? I'm not the only one who has it; there are a few mentions of it here and one thread on the Dell forums. Yet I don't here about it as much as other issues and there seems to be no official word on it. Do we know if this is a driver problem, a BIOS problem, or a hardware problem? This is the only major issue I'm having with my machine and I'd really like to see it fixed.

 

Everyone using phones has it - just shows that not many do so. Usually I would say driver problem, but seeing that the latest Bios update resolved something (whatever) regarding the audio system I am not so sure anymore.

 

What is the headphone problem? Mine seem to be working fine.

 

This is the sound problem. The sound on the speakers works, but then after plugging in the earphone, I get a pop up notice that I plugged something in so I click earphone, but it doesn't work, no sound nada. I have to go to the speaker icon , playback, disable the Speaker/Headphone, then enable the Speaker/Headphone. This would cause whatever i was listening to, to error out and I would have to restart it and then the earphone works.

To get back the speakers, I would have to put the XPS 15 9550 in sleep mode and then turn it back on.

 

But that is just working fine in my case. I am using it every day at work.

The only problem I had was: I unpluged the working earphones, set the laptop to sleep, pluged them in BEFORE turning it back on. In that case they did not work, but simply plug-out plug-in solved it.

 

Does anyone here purchased an core i3 6100H XPS 9550 version? How it perform game like GTA 5 or program like Autocad 2D 2016? Sooth running or freeze sometimes?

 

The i3 does not have a dedicated graphics card, so I'd imagine it runs GTA 5 terribly

 

More like a slideshow than a game

 

Anyone have charge thresholds/thermal management working on the Xps 13/15? My brother's 13 isn't following the bios thresholds and neither is mine

 

********, I've already said I'm using mine at least once a day and I don't have that problem.

 

Chromencast does completely different thing and is intended for different purposes, it is not like connecting an additional screen.

 

I don't have any issue while I'm using headphones, and I use headphone every time.

 

I do have the headphones problem from time to time. It was worse before the last BIOS and driver update. This and the HDMI port not coming back from the screen sleep and the laptop would have been awesome.

For now I just deal with these as quickly I can and move on. I am hoping that Dell will do something about them.

 

SpeedTest.Net result using FTTH (Paris) and ASUS RT-AC68U router is 453Mbps/259Mbps. The test shows Dell WiFi card is OMG fast and the radio has high sensitivity. The router is 2m distant and traverses one thick plaster wall. Despite that, the test shows the maximum down/up speeds that the 1Gbps/250Mbps pipe can deliver over *WiFi*.

 

Anyone getting app crashes (tray apps) during resolution change/display changing? Or it could be when unplugged.

 

That's freaking amazing. I just ran speedtest.net, and it's over 92Mbps, which is (slightly over!) the limit of my ISP connection. So, yeah, I don't miss the Ethernet port all that much. And y'all have some fast internet over there!

Of course, higher speeds could still come in helpful when copying files across my network. I just tried copying a large file from a networked drive, and it was 15MBps (about 150Mbps) average. It could be limited something other than the WiFi.

 

For those of you who are having headphone jack problems (and I suppose those who aren't): Could you describe what problem you are having, what Realtek driver, what BIOS, and what version of Dell Foundation Services you have installed? I'm trying to find some more information about this and hopefully bring it to Dell's attention.

For me:
Headphone jack only works if it's the first time I plug in headphones since reboot and the computer hasn't been running too long. If I unplug and replug, or if the computer has been running for a while (I'm going to try to figure out what triggers this), it fails to detect the plug insertion and in fact seems to crash the entire audio stack.
Realtek HD Audio 7748
1.19 BIOS
Dell Foundation Services not installed
I also have Sound Blaster X-Fi MB3 software running. I will try with it disabled but I don't think it will have any effect.

 

Hi Guys, Need Your advice! Thanks in advance.

1.) I'm more on music and video editing guy - so only installing all software i need for work. I've installed "DPC Latency Checker" and i have around 1500us and spikes sometimes even an 9000! So in Youtube or Soundcloud its strike and pops audio sometimes - on cheaper machine i don't had such a probloems. Even on old machines. Can You guys check what is Yours DPC Latency? All drivers installed - but i would like to disable all dell audio to have only pure signal. I will use audio interface but for every day use and web i'm using jack connected do some setup.

2.) Another thing i've found. I have only 256gb SSD drive and i found that C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository is 36GB!!! is it normal and can i delete it?

3.) What about battery life ? if im using almost all the time AC plugged in - and when battery is fully charged - it bypassing charging to prevent battery use or not? How to know?

4.) I've read a lot about SSD maintance and it's controversion all around. Would appreciate simple and TRUE one tips on using SSD for better life and perfomance.

Thank You guys! Have a nice day!

[email protected]

 

Additionally: I think I remember that the sound of the notebook was gone on unplugging the phone sometimes as well. Only way to get it back was reboot then. It might have something to do with the Maxx software, but I did not try what happens when one uninstalls that. I am not Dell's beta tester, they can fix their **** alone. And if not I continue to bash them whereever I can, that simple.

 

Then you should know that DPC L does not work correctly under Windows 10. Use Latency Monitor instead.

Seems you did not set the Power Scheme to High Performance. My XPS15 i5 FHD runs at full CPU load at 64 samples without drop outs. No DPC above 500 µs. Unfortunately it does not do 32 samples without drop outs at this time.

 

Thanks. Will check te system Latency Checker - and i having power plan set to maximum perfomance for sure. But the popping and strikes hapening. Strange to spent this amount of money. Mines XPS 9550 is FHD i7 / 8GB ram / 256 SSD