Dell XPS 15 (Skylake) 9550 Owner's Lounge

Hi Yang,

I had that issue and found the LCD cable to be a bit wonky. By pushing a bunch of buttons randomly I semi-bricked my system but eventually got a clean install to work.

What worked for me will take 5 minutes (or you can have the tech do it):

1. Remove bottom cover

2. Remove the silver LCD cable cover (it is near the battery and has one black screw. CAUTION - that screw is JIS so a normal phillips screwdriver will strip easily and it will take hours to remove. Don't ask how I know)

3. CAREFULLY remove cable from interface. CAREFULLY reinsert cable into interface. Might take you a few tries. Dell tech had same issue when he serviced my laptop.

Be careful as the LCD connection is incredibly delicate and the pins incredibly small.

There is a 9550 tech PDF floating around the Dell site. Also lots of pictures and text here at NBR forums that can help you.

PS - I would have tech or you try this a few times before tech tears things apart to give you a used (I mean refurbished) motherboard

Good luck

 

Thanks for the info. I don't have a T5 screwdriver at hand to take off the cover, so I will ask the tech to try this first for me, however I believe the screen is fine since when I power the laptop on while holding D, I get the different colours (white red green blue black). Hopefully I get this issue resolved soon, I was really hyped when it came today.

Do you think if I ask the tech, if he takes off the heatsink, to replace the stock thermal paste with something like mx4, he would do it?

 

I didn't get any colors when powering up the laptop in any situation so the fix I used is likely not applicable to you...

 

new bios has just been released on dells website .14 the version is currently updating now will report back if it fixes the charging past 60% issue

 

Well it sounds a bit more than a loose cable, probably a new mobo if pulling the battery doesn't work. And yes the tech will use your paste, never met one that wont unless like me you carry a range and often have a better one than the customer

Reported already including a dedicated thread, keep up m8

And yes the only fix in this was the battery after spending 40 minutes on the phone to Dell to let them know how piss poor they are at fixing the flickering.

 

haha my bad there was me thinking i had reported it 1st for a change, atleast its out though and atleast 1 problem solved for many of us, pity about the screen flicker issue remaining however

 

Can someone please check their touchpad behavior for me? I'm starting to think I'm crazy.

Is there a mechanical click when you push down anywhere on the touchpad? Mine only clicks when I push on the front border, and I have to push hard.

I swear it wasn't like this before, but I've sent it back to Dell twice. Both times they've returned it saying it's fixed, but it's still the same.

Before I send it back a third time, I need to know I'm not imagining this. But I used to be able to select text or drag and drop, and I can't now.

 

top of the trackpads fixed so it doesn't click.

 

OK, thanks. But if you push in the middle of the pad, shouldn't it click? Mine does not, short of pushing down with at least 5 pounds of pressure (not an exaggeration).

 

Mine easily clicks a couple of centimeters from the top

 

After having my Motherboard and WiFi card replaced im still running into a number of issues with my 9550 including but not limited to..

- Power Limit Throttling
- WiFi disconnected/not working when lid closed (external monitor)
- Black screen and unresponsive (on startup at login page)

Dell in Australia (Malaysia?) has offered to pick up and refund the cost of the laptop after the first and second issues were unable to be solved.

I originally purchased my refurbished laptop for AU $1600 or USD $1200 from an Australian eBay seller as the XPS 15 here in Australia starts at AU $2500 or USD $1900 for the i7 1080p with 256 SDD.

Before purchase I made sure that the laptop had Dell NBD warranty however Dell now has informed me that the original purchase price was AU $1300 or US $1000 and that is what they will refund me.

I guess my question is, is it worth losing out a few hundred dollars and finding another refurbished XPS15 (from the official outlet this time) for around the same price that I originally paid or a bit more..

Or should I suck it up and put up with the issues knowing that getting another XPS15 will likely have the same, or different problems.

 

Thanks. I called Dell, and they asked me to send it back a third time. They assured me it would be fixed this time, but I have my doubts--I'm losing confidence in their repair service.

 

Obvious one is to claim back from eBay via the resolutions option.

 

Didn't think of that Gonzo, will give it a shot but its been a few months (around 2/3)

 

Is there any consensus on the best USB-C dock (with Displayport) for the XPS 15 9550?

 

I am glad your warranty was honored by Dell, so worse case scenario is that you losses are capped at a few hundred dollars and a lot of frustration. In turn, you learned a bit and have a good story to share.

Set your expectations with eBay and PayPal. Their businesses rely on high-volume sellers, not occasional buyers, so the internet is littered with sad "consumer protection" stories. Contacting them with non-standard situations (such as yours) is not always easy.
But give it a try!

I am never 100% comfortable with transferred warranty schemes. But I never envisioned the risk of Dell shorting your warranty refund (by roughly the amount of the seller's profits?). We learn something new every day. Interestingly, if you had purchased the laptop at a "normal" retailer (say BestBuy or NewEgg direct), would Dell have offered to refund you the retailer's wholesale cost or retail price? Regardless, with a good retailer, they might intervene to help "make it right."

 

I have contacted the seller on eBay and they offered a replacement machine. If that does not work out then they mentioned that they are happy to offer a full refund. So far so good..

In terms of the Dell warranty, I made sure to ask for the machine serial number before purchase. Then I jumped on the phone to confirm that the warranty was valid and that it could be transferred across. Once I received the machine all I had to do was create a new Dell account and link that to the XPS, since then there have been no issues with Dell.

In terms of eBay, I went there to purchase the machine in as Dell gouges their price here in Australia and we are left with fewer configuration options. Case in point the i3 and the i5 configurations were never sold here and the lowest spec machine (i7 1080p 256ssd) is USD $1,900 in Australia compared to USD $1,400 on the dell.com website.

 

Well after all of that, a dell contracted technician came along, nice guy, saying I should have just asked for a replacement since he had a refurbished motherboard. Proceeds to reseat the RAM and bam, laptop turns on. Now I feel stupid.

 

Well if you can't open it yourself to check these things!

Be glad he had the brains to check the ram was seated before fitting the refurb board.

 

Tons of 9550s on the Dell outlet site at decent prices

 

Yang - Unfortunately the 9550 does not have robust RAM clips and we have seen a few cases of loose RAM causing random problems.

Never expected loose RAM to cause your issues but glad it was easily fixed.

 

well at least that is over now. What SSDs did your models ship with?

• My 4k 512GB came with SK HYNIX pc300

edit

My fans are on quite a high setting even though my cpu and gpu are ~37 celcius. I also get the TDP throttle sign in ThrottleStop for some reason. I heard that uninstalling the intel thermal manager works, but I was wonder whether there are any other solutions?

 

HWinfo64 can give you detailed information about what is happening on your system via temp sensors, CPU speed, wattage, and some throttling details. What programs are you running in that situation? What do you have physically connected to your system?

Sometimes my fans will spin a bit when at say 38*C, but not 5000rpm.

 

Same as most laptops I work with, put it down to the poor sod assembling it being 17 hours into his 20 hour shift before he sleeps under his workstation!
Once in and correctly seated they shouldn't come out unless the courier bounced it off the post when he shot for goal

Hynix is a new one on the scene.

You shouldn't uninstall the thermals (new one out today but no fixes)

What is high? tickovers 2500rpm flat outs 4500 I think.

Plenty of apps to read the RPM. Also under what load, idle it should kick in at low now and again.

 

@pressing we have to stop posting at the same time

 

I thought the same!

For those who don't know already, note GoNz0 is a professional laptop engineer and I am not!

 

Okay, sorry for the late reply, I've been messing around setting my laptop up, and my 400kbps down hasn't been helping.

As for the fan issue, it seems to be to do with the dell command power manager I installed, with it's different thermal profiles, where switching between profiles brings the fan speed down. If the issue still recurs I'll delve into it deeper, but for now it seems to have stopped.

I have been having a major issue though, in that games won't scale properly in fullscreen, even with fullscreen scaling selected under the intel graphics program. I can't access the nvidia one since the laptop display is connected to the iGPU. I have only confirmed this issue on Minecraft and Osu! so far, since my download speed is really poor though. This could just be a quick restart fix though.

A minor issue, however, is the fact I can't boot with my SSD in AHCI mode, and I don't want to reinstall again since I already have once to change my user folder from /yanya to /YanYang. Are there any workarounds for the AHCI thing?

Edit: Restarting didn't fix the fullscreen scaling issues at resolutions lower than the desktop.

 

you need to set the safe mode flag in msconfig, reboot into safe mode then reboot into BIOS and make the change, reboot into safe mode and remove the safe mode flag and reboot again

 

Sweet I'll give it a try.

 

Hello forum,

I need to buy the Dell XPS HDMI/VGA adapter. I know there are two options USB 3 or USB TYPE C adapter. Does anyone have info on any of these two models? I don't have anything that uses Type C so I think I will go with this one. Also, are there are alternatives? Dell has this for about $50 last time I checked. Thanks ya'll.

 

I have two of them. One in the Office and one at Home. Because no Wifi in the Office and i Needed a solid Gigabit Network Connection at Home.
Before I had two TB15 Docks. I send both back to Dell because with the TB15 I always had Stability Problems. Most of the Time disconnects and the Network never worked.

This cheap and Tiny Type C Adapter is Rock solid and I'm happy with it.

To my knowledge, there is no Working alternative if you Need something like a Docking station or Adapter. I Might be wrong.

 

Is anyone else getting a laggy (below 60fps) experience in general use? Maybe its just the intel 530 struggling to push the 4k screen, but transitions and animations are really choppy for me, especially things such as windows + tab

 

No, all good here, have you got the latest video drivers installed?

Maybe run DDU to clear out any leftovers and reinstall the latest?

 

I updated my drivers using device manager, still the same problem. Going to try DDU and report back

 

Download from Dells site for the Intel and Nvidia's site for the nvidia driver

 

The win + tab transition is still choppy after installing the driver from dell, but performance may be slightly better (not sure if its a placebo). The driver was version 20.19.15.4483 from 01/07/2016

 

Hi,

I received my XPS 4K model from the MS store yesterday. I really love the laptop so far, but there are some problems with it that actually cause me a headache trying to fix. I read the forums and it seems that some suggest keeping the original windows to avoid some problems, so I am currently running stock image.

First off is the annoying Realtek driver. I don't see how people think Maxxaudio makes the speakers better. It's extremely unnatural, basically boosting the highs and overloading the speakers, and plugging external speakers or headphones causes them to be extremely unbalanced with piercing treble. I disabled maxx audio, but it would constantly turn on and pierce my eardrums again. Trying to uninstall it causes windows to reinstall the drivers on startup, and worse, now without an option to disable maxxaudio. Trying to fix this problem for a whole afternoon, and ended up disabling auto driver install, and blocking system and trusted installers from accessing both Realtek and maxxaudio installation folder. Kinda a weird fix, but hey it works. Rocking with windows generic driver now.

I also read the undervaluing thread, and it appears XTU is indeed causing throttle problems when the GPU is loaded. Tried using throttlestop, but I can't quite understand how to use it. I *think I got the settings right, but the CPU was still throttling under GPU load (XTu uninstalled). Currently running valley benchmark without both programs, and will see if any throttle occurs after I get back. The initial 5 min run indicated it fluctuating between 2.6 and 3.1 though, but I can't be too sure until I get back.
EDIT: CPU stay around 2.1-3.1 with unigine valley benchmark running for a full hour.

My third problem is more annoying. My Logitech unifying mouse (m701) lags really bad with the receiver plugged into the left. Using an adapter and plugging it to the USB c port seemed to ease the problem, with still occasional lag. Perhaps the XPS really do have unstable USB ports like some suggest?

Fourth, the motherboard has obvious coil wine after the battery charges to 100% and leaving the adapter on. (EDIT: To clarify, I meant if it continuous to "charge", aka leaving the AC adapter on, it will start buzzing after battery finished charging) If the laptop was picture perfect I could easily overlook this problem, since you stop hearing it 5 ft away, but with all these problems...

I'm not too sure what to do now. Will installing a brand new windows image solve problems? Im afraid it will cause screen flickers, and that so far stable Broadcom card to act up.

Also, I just remembered, my photoshop CC acts up when enabling scroll to zoom. Perhaps it's my mouse's problem (this exact mouse worked fine with my other old laptop) or just the whole broken dell solftware's problem?

Sorry for the long post, and have a great day everyone!

 

My animations of programs opening from task bar also lags, but that really isn't unexpected for a iGPU. It doesn't really bother me though. I also found smaller window size programs lags less when with min/maximize/win-tab animations. I ended up disabling some of the animations to look smoother.

 

Oh well, I guess I'm just spoilt from using a desktop for ages.

 

I haven't changed anything about the audio, and undervolting with ThrottleStop for me also gets it to ~3.1Ghz.

As for the laggy mouse input, I'm not certain if it's the same, but I with my Logitech G502 I have no such problems, it feels laggy in games since the 4k screen has a fairly slow response time.

Haven't experienced the coil whine either, but I am using it in the "primarily plugged into ac", so my battery isnt charging to fully capacity.

 

Just to clarify, my coil wine startes once it charges to max charge and while leaving the AC plugged in. It's essentially feels like it's discharging the the extra electricity.

Also, you mind telling me how to get throttlestop to work? Adaptive voltage control with offset doesn't seem to make a difference at all. I'm fairly new at this so I'm not sure how it works.

 

As far as I know with throttlestop, you use the FIVR panel, check the Unlock Adjustable Voltage under CPU Core Voltage for CPU Core, Intel GPU and CPU Cache, and then just offset the voltage. After that, at the bottom right, I selected "OK- Save voltages after Throttlestop exits." under Save Voltage Changes, and then click apply.

Here is an article by Eason with more details.

 

Hi all.

Recently purchased a second hand XPS 15 9550 (highest spec'd one available direct from Dell, I believe) which had very little use from the original owner (hence the sale). It's been reset to default Windows 10 Pro 64-bit settings. He said that he did not experience any problems in the short time he used it (decided he wanted a smaller/lighter ultrabook and so downsized to a Lenovo Thinkpad 13"). I appreciate that I have a fair amount of reading to do within this sub-forum but any advice to a brand new owner of this machine would be useful. Are there any must-read threads/posts containing essential information for new owners in order to get the very best out of this powerhouse ultrabook?

Was contemplating making a backup image of what's currently on my machine and then doing a clean install using GoNz0's custom ISO image.

Any recommendations for which image backup software to use? Have read Macrium Reflect getting a few mentions. For ongoing system restores was planning on using Restore Point Creator (3rd-party free)

Whilst I'm an experienced computer user, I'm not from an I.T. background (yet!) and definitely not in the same league of many of the professional's and guru's here.

Thanks in advance.

 

I have the same issue with my Logitech MW Anywhere 2. When I use the other Logitech mouse (M345) everything is ok.

 

Macrium all the way m8. I like it so much I now have the paid version for daily incrementals to keep it quick. I what would have been a 500gb restore in 15 minutes thanks to the delta copy/restore feature

FYI I deleted my original image as it is pointless several months on. After building an ISO Macrium became my go to way out of a problem. I now use it on a network share BUT you will need a USB to Ethernet adapter as it doesn't do WiFI, then again restoring on WiFi would be a nightmare.

I initial backup to a USB drive, copy that to the NAS and continue from there, should I need to restore I sync the USB drive and plug that in. After rolling back a day I would probably restore a day using my ethernet adapter.

(Incrementals on the paid version)

 

Bluetooth mouse here, no problems.

 

Thanks for replying.

Will any USB to Ethernet adaptor be fine, presumably USB 3.0 would be better/faster? There seems to be dozens of different Dell and unbranded ones on evilBay.

 

I tried them both: BT and radio. My MX Anywhere 2 is so laggy to un-usable on my 9550. On my office laptop (HP 640 G1 Win7) it runs just fine. I don't know who's the culprit as my G345 runs fine. Actually. the mouse movements are more like jumping than laggy. I see many users have the same issue with Logitech mouses. I'm really clueless.

 

So long as it has drivers for windows 10 as Macrium will copy over any drivers to the boot environment when it makes you a USB boot stick. I have a cheap USB3 one and it works great.

Mines a Logitech one T630

 

It seems the 9550 came out of the factory with a lot of bugs, but most have been resolved with BIOS and drivers so don't be too scared of the early posts. Also posters here are not a fair sample of 9550 users but rather people trying to solve issue or optimize performance. I had a few hiccups but am really quite happy with my 9550, particularly after some tweaks recommended below.

Note a few of the newer BIOS' cause problems, particularly with the 4k screen so do some research to find "best" bios. The new m.2 drivers are a challenge as expected but most people seem to have found satisfactory solutions which are documented here for a lot of SSDs. Same with other drivers. You will save yourself a lot of time reading the posts here for a few days before working.

Also, you can improve thermals considerably repasting the CPU/GPU. And repadding a few of the VRAM chips. Optional but these are defects out of the factory and fixing them is cheap, easy and provides a good bump in performance, particularly at extremes. It matters because the 9550 is about the thinnest real laptop on the market so thermals are at the limit.

Some people (like me) use ThrottleStop to undervolt the Intel chips for a big cooling boost; Intel XTU has some real problems so do not install that on the 9550. A few of the really experienced guys here do not undervolt. NBR user Eason wrote a simple ThrottleStop guide; it is linked on his signature and takes 10 minutes to read.

I would start reading these threads:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ean-install-guide-custom-iso-download.789769/
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/xps-9550-4k-panel-screen-flicker-thread.795285/
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...rature-observations-undervolt-repaste.785963/
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/dell-xps-15-9550-power-limit-throttling.793136/
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ist-of-hardware-and-software-problems.784691/