Dell XPS 15 (Skylake) 9550 Owner's Lounge

I would go back to BIOS 1.2.0 for now and consider a BIOS reset to clean out any gremlins.
Links in my sig.

 

Thanks I'll try that now. When you say 'BIOS reset' I noticed that there were 2 options - one was 'factory settings', the other was 'default settings'. Any idea what the difference is, and which I should go for?

 

I usually pick default.

 

Following the most recent updates (last week), I believe there was an update to the Audio Device Driver and some Windows Updates my Dell XPS 15 9550 will no longer shutdown, selecting shutdown causes the laptop restart after a few seconds. The only way to power off the laptop is via the power button. :-(

Is anyone else having the same issue ?

 

Try backtracking, uninstall the audio and after a couple of reboots try shutting down?

 

Hmm - fixed the screen flashing, but no difference at all for the boot problems. I'm going to try uninstalling the anniversary update, to see if that's the problem or not.

 

Indeed. Samsung being the #1 (largest) and SKHynix #2 (2nd largest in the World) are hands down the best, hence why they are used and found in literally every "worthy" computer, phone, graphic cards etc... in the World. Apple, HP, Dell, NVIDIA, AMD, etc...

Even other familiar brands use Samsung and/or SKHynix chips, yet they sell it as xyz brand. It's hilarious.

The 1TB Toshiba m.2 that comes in our XPS...haha....SMH....Samsung chipsets, yet people think it's Toshiba lol.

Here's a pic that I took of mine. Look and you'll see written in the chips, Samsung.





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The W10 Anniversary update is a disaster. Avoid it if you can. Talk about intrusivness. Ex. Can no longer disable Cortana? A bit communist wouldn't you agree? And they call it an update. SMH...dig deeper and you'll find more issues with it.

Avoid it at all cost.

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*Sigh*

 

Of course can it be disabled. Google is your friend.
http://www.howtogeek.com/265027/how-to-disable-cortana-in-windows-10/

 

Just a mini-update while I'm rolling back. Turns out it wasn't hung on boot, just taking a long time. Several other people seem to be having the same issue since the anniversary update, so hopefully rolling back will fix it.

 

Did you have the Samsung NVME driver installed?

 

Thanks for the link, it'll be helpful for those staying on W10. However, there are more issues than just the example that I gave with cortana as you can see with the many on NBR in general up in arms over the anniversary update.

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Several days ago disabled Cortana on every PC I own...

 

I just have the Dell provided drivers. The problem actually appears to be related to virtual memory - credit to this thread here:
http://www.tenforums.com/windows-up...-very-slow-boot-after-anniversary-update.html

Setting virtual memory to manual seem to fix it.

 

After a relatively quiet summer, I see lots of 9550s on the Dell outlet over the past day or so. I did not see any additional coupons; some are priced very well as is

 

I don't know if anyone has looked into this yet but while I was changing my TIM I checked the model number on the GDDR5 chips used in my laptop at least. They're Samsung k4g41325fc-hc03. They 03 in this case means they're a 6ghz part despite our 5ghz stock speed. So we can be comfortable bumping the clocks up pretty far. It's also possible they're multi-sourced so it's worth a look if you open it up in the future.

 

New xps 15 9550 owner here in need of some assistance. I've got two xps 15's w/ the same behavior (my original & the replacement Dell shipped me)

Specs:
16GB, 512GB SSD toshiba hd (model NVMe THNSN5512GPU7 NV), i7-6700HQ CPU, & 1080p display
Latest BIOS & drivers (tried previous BIOS too)

Issue:
When I'm in a silent environment I hear a soft buzzing/staticy noise when something is visibly "happening" on the screen. It can be anything from a download progress bar, to me scrolling or moving a webpage, or holding down a keyboard key.

To reproduce, a good test to run the CPU-Z stress test that shows a little progress bar & number on screen, put your ear up to the keybed, you can hear the buzzing. Now, minimize CPU-Z and put your ear to the keybed...no more buzzing......

It's driving me crazy. Any ideas what this could be or things I could try to eliminate it?

 

Maybe coil whine?

See the sounds I found summarized below. Also check out that thread as a few other users had their own observations...

 

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I've seen that info but not quite the same. This only happens when motion is occurring on screen and at this point I really think it's related to the display driver? This is the same issue (xps 13): https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/3ta1gl/dell_xps_13_9350_buzzing_noise/d1ivm9v

I haven't been able to find a setting to eliminate the issue and am about to try uninstalling the Intel Display driver next.

 

Well I confirmed the issue disappears when you take the intel hd driver out of the equation. I restart into Safe Mode and no buzzing-sound.

 

Maybe the latest Intel HD driver will help. Get it directly from the Intel site. For example, these are the drivers for my FHD (it looks like both the latest & beta are newer than the driver on the Dell site):

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/pr...-530-for-6th-Generation-Intel-Core-Processors

 

It was a really good idea...but same issue after installing the latest beta. Urgh. Open to more ideas but just kind of deflated at this point. lol

If anyone else has this problem, I'd be interested in hearing about it.......seems likely that most people haven't noticed (or there is an issue w/ those currently shipping) considering both laptops I have do the same thing.

 

Have you tried setting the nvidia card as the primary in the nvidia control panel?

 

Under Nvidia control panel, Manage 3d Settings, Preferred Graphics processor? Changing that to Nvidia from Auto-select has to effect.

 

Yeah nvidia instead of auto, no change?

 

No change. I miss the good old days when a graphics card handled everything...I think the nvidia portion on here literally effects 3D only.

I feel like I'm being so picky about this...but I can't unhear it.

 

Maybe not. All laptops seem to have some noise when the fans are off, it is hard to shield it with an ultrabook like this.

Maybe try DDU (display driver uninstaller) as that stops windows downloading drivers, you can then try the latest Intel (not the beta I use 4463) and the new Nvidia driver.
At least this way it will clear out everything to do with the display driver and let you install your own after.

Got to be worth a bash?

 

Hi, the same sh*t has happened to me. I have even noticed laptop turning on itself during the night!

 

Disable "allow wake timers" in the advanced power properties under sleep.

If it is restarting on shutdown then it is either crashing or in my case the BIOS had a moment and needed setting to defaults to fix it.

Use "Who Crashed" by replenish to see if it is crashing, if not reset the BIOS.

 

Thank you for directing me to DDU - very useful! So I spent this morning trying every Intel Driver for this chipset listed on Intel's website paired w/ Nvidia's current website-listed driver. Once I install the Intel driver, each version causes the noise to reappear. I'm confident now that this is definitely either a driver issue or an issue w/ the actual 530 chipset.

 

I clean installed; everything was good but I cannot seem to make AHCI mode work on my model, as it consistently crashed with Unexpected_Store_Exception. Back to RAID and very stable on Windows 10 AU. Thanks for creating the ISO and making it so easy .

 

It must be a samsung only issue as my toshiba so far has been rock solid, over 5 days uptime before I needed to reboot.
Either way AHCI or raid, same performance so it really doesn't matter

 

So I had a Dell repair guy visiting me today to replace my MB. I noticed my bios version was a 1.2.12 !?!?!?
I can't find any information about the new bios er a change log or anything, Am I missing something here or do you guys know something i don't?

 

It must be a production BIOS or if it is a refurb board they may have been told to install it to fix the flicker issue. It should show soon assuming it does what ist is meant to do.

 

Well the laptop isn't able to recharge the battery so they are coming again tomorrow.......

 

Can you ask them to give you 1.2.12 bios package? Everybody will be appreciated if you will share it with community (sure, if they will agree to give it to you)

 

Does the battery show in the BIOS, wondering if the tech forgot to plug it back in?

 

yup but there are no primary battery flow.
I can try to contact support again.

 

I did a clean install earlier in the year and installed the Dell Audio driver, and a few months after I started getting an issue where anything that tried to use audio would hang (especially browsers). I realised that disabling audio, restarting and then enabling audio once Windows has fully loaded would fix the problem, however this is tedious to do every time. Has anybody else experienced this?

 

You might try disconnecting the battery cable and reseating it again.

 

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Remove the Dell audio drivers and that Maxx garbage.

I went to the Realtek website directly and downloaded driver 6.0.1.7898 dated 2 aug 2016 and that has been the best performing audio driver I have found.

 

i think i will let the dell repair guy take care off it. There is a chance that I will get a new windows key again like i did today

 

Looks like a new BIOS is available.

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us...-15-9550-laptop&languageCode=en&categoryId=BI

 

Not bad at all! But we Still don't know what v.1.2.12 fixes? I can tell it isn't the flickering at low brightness :s

 

Which screen do you have?

 

FHD, The lift is flickering at low brightness

 

Busy doing a BBQ at the mo but I will flash it later to see what it does too qhd screen flicker.

Sent from my SM-G920F

 

I'm yet to see the screen flicker.

Edit:
Spoke too soon. I didn't seen any flicker on the lowest setting while plugged in. I then unplugged it and saw a flicker 10 seconds in.

Edit 2: plugged it back in and restarted, flickering is still present.