The DELL Studio XPS 13 horror thread

Well, here are the specs :

Studio xps 13
Processor :Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor P8600 (2.40GHz)
Operating system :Genuine Windows Vista ultimate 32
Memory :4GB DDR3 SDRAM
Monitor :13.3” WXGA WLED Display
Hard Drive: 500GB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drive
Optical Drive :Slot load 8X max DVD+/-RW* Drive with DVD+R
Graphic Card :NVIDIA® GeForce® 9500GE graphics
Wireless Network Card ell Wireless 1515 802.11n Mini-Card
Bluetooth option

Arrived three days ago in Verona (Italy) from the polish fab.
Please keep in mind that I'm a Dell "aficionado" as this is my third laptop from them ( the last was a Inspiron 6000), so, no preconceived at all...


So far :

Problems with the IDT High Def Audio driver

- Stacsv.exe service (responsible for automatically detect where you plug the earphones) goes to 50 % of CPU all the time after startup ( it chokes one of the 2 cores) and there's a lot of people having the same issue with this Audio card, just search the inet, I disabled the service and this seems to fix it for the moment...

- if you close the cover of the XPS, when reopened, the earphones, no longer works...you need to reinstall the IDT drivers in order to make them work again or....I temporarily fix it by installing an older driver version (6.10.0.6047,A08 just look for the R196492.exe file in Dell repository), but this sounds no good to me, anyway...


General problem

Freeze !!! Freeze !!! Freeze !!! Freeze !!! Freeze !!! Freeze !!! Freeze !!!

Today it freezed up at least 10 times, in random situations....just after booting, or scrolling an IE page, or just running VmWare.

The notebook got completely stuck, so the only chance is to forcely shut it down.
I don't think the temperature is responsible for this (got it with SIW.exe):

----- [Sensor] ------
----- [DELLXPS] ----------------------------------------------------------------

Sensor Value Min Max
ACPI
Temperatures
THRM 60 °C (139 °F) 55 °C (130 °F) 60 °C (139 °F)
Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo P8600
Temperatures
Core #0 49 °C (120 °F) 48 °C (118 °F) 52 °C (125 °F)
Core #1 47 °C (116 °F) 44 °C (111 °F) 50 °C (121 °F)
GeForce 9500M (GF 9200MGS + GF 9400MG)
Temperatures
GPU Core 56 °C (132 °F) 54 °C (129 °F) 56 °C (132 °F)
GeForce 9500M (GF 9400MG + GF 9200MGS)
Temperatures
GPU Core 61 °C (141 °F) 57 °C (134 °F) 61 °C (141 °F)


Nor the Dell diagnostic ( Fn + Power UP) reported any problem....

Last but not least....if you go to http://www.thesycon.de/eng/free_download.shtml
download and run the free, tiny utility to measure the DPC Latency, I had the pleasure to see that my brand new XPS is flawed with latency problems, unlike is older and slower Inspiron 6000...

I quote from thesicon website :
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thesycon's DPC Latency Checker is a Windows tool that analyses the capabilities of a computer system to handle real-time data streams properly. It may help to find the cause for interruptions in real-time audio and video streams, also known as drop-outs.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just what I needed, since plugging my Stratocaster Guitar through my (already flawlessly working elsewere) RockFrog USB Interface onto the XPS, all I get are thousands of clicks and pops....!!!!

I'm tired of fighting with my new Dell, which was the winner when I choosed between XPS and MacBook Pro, and, yeah I know it was just out, but considering to return it, seriously.

Someone experienced the same issues ? ( "aeasaeas " I know your freezes as well...)

Ciao

Andrea

 

I do recommend that you simply return it.

 

Yeah I had mine freeze, but only once. It freezes every time I use the eSATA port though.

e: I ran the latency test. Yeah, I see what you mean. Did you isolate what's causing it specifically?

 

wow id return it if i were you. safe some future rant as well.

 

Man, if more people come up with these problems, I might cancel or return. That's ridiculous that Dell would ship such a problem-ridden laptop. Do the problems get better after reformatting? I was hesitant about buying from Dell but I thought they would have gotten better so I took a chance--looks like my fears are becoming a reality. Hopefully these problems are not in the US version but they probably will be.

 

First, I give you props on the thread name.
Second, after reading your post the title is justified.
I am in awe of the absolute garbage that is being passed of as a computer these days.

The one thing that I may be able to help you with is your DPC latency. As you stated, the audio clicks, pops, and dropouts are indeed a result of horrifying DPC latency. The culprit - your Dell wireless card.

All of the Dell branded wireless cards are made by Broadcom. Apparently Broadcom doesn't care that their wireless adapters are guilty of outrageous DPC spikes and are ruining people's audio. They don't see this as a problem and neither does Dell. Don't bother talking to them about it. They will play stupid and try every tactic to distract you.

You can disable that thing and your monster spikes that are killing your audio should go away. But the permanent solution is pull that piece of garbage out of your machine and install an Intel wireless adapter. Doesn't matter if it's the Intell 3495 or the 4695. They are both awesome and are superior for DPC problems.

I wish people would read these forums before they buy. There are numerous threads that talk about this DPC problem with Broadcom. I myself and others have advised that people steer clear of the Dell brand wireless.

Some users have reported some relief from DPC spikes with updated drivers, but it is my opinion that don't even bother. After extensive research I have concluded that it's best to just not buy Dell's wireless adapters (If and when they correct this issue, they would be just fine to purchase). Intell adapters do not ever suffer from DPC spikes at this time.

Disable that pile of crud and see if your spikes disappear. It will be horrifying to know that you do this and nothing changes. But this mainboard that Dell put in that machine might be a real gem.

 

you're not alone and like the 5th-6th person i've read of that's been afflicted with this since people started receiving their XPS 13 shipments. seems to happen a lot, sorry, should have stuck with Lats if you were going to stay with Dell. their consumer line seems like s**t lately.

 

Save for the latency issue, it seems like everything else is a software problem... I'd venture you'll take care of most of your issues with a reinstall. The temps look pretty normal, so they probably aren't the source of your problem(s).

 

I tried disabling, even uninstalling my wireless card, but it didn't seem to make a difference on mine. The latency spike comes in an even pattern though, so it's got to be something like that causing it.

I thought maybe it'd be helpful to consolidate 1340 issues into one big thread so I made one here. Biko65, I quoted you for the latency app, if you don't mind.

 

Biko65, save yourself some aggravation, and return that thing if you are still in the time frame. The freezing problems alone are pretty much all that I would need to return it before another day go's by.

I'm really sorry that didn't help you. That last line in my post about the mainboard must be true from what you are saying. If that latency doesn't go away with all of you cards disabled, then it's in the mainboard itself.

Return that thing before it consumes you.

 

The xps 13's wireless lan card is the 'dell wireless 1515 802.11n half mini-card' which is atheros based not broadcom based. Looks like the dell 1510 was the broadcom based card.

 

I wouldn't be so quick to cancel your order. Test it as soon as it arrives and if there are problems, send it back. My bet is it will be just fine.

There only seems to be a few people on this forum having actual problems with this machine. I'm sure thousands of people are completely satisfied. People tend to tell the world when they have a problem but if everything is great, 9/10 will stop reading a forum like this much less post about it.

I too hope that the US models have less problems. I have been researching a new laptop for months now and this is by far the best for its price.

To those who have significant problems you should return it and get a new one or a refund.

 

yes Biko65 ,,, i was having many many freezing situation before for like every 10 mints or so ,,, after i reformat the whole hard drive and repartition it and make fresh windows install , the problem still there but a bit better now it freezes up once every 3 - 4 hours, its nor periodically issue its just frequents as 4 or 5 times a day which is for me still frustrating.

 

Thanks for pointing that out. I was not aware that Dell picked up a new wireless maker.

This Studio XPS 13 so far looks like a real lemmon. But on the bright side they have Atheros wireless now.

 

Most of the time, there's only one thing that causes freezing the way that has been described by the OP and that is heat. I predict this particular model to be a tragedy of bad engineering. We shall see. I strongly vote dump that thing.

Reminder: Dell starts counting the 21 days from the date of invoice, not starting when you receive the unit.

 

excellent, you've managed to get it within Dell's acceptable limits

 

LMAO a36! Nice timing.

Edit: (slowdown is still laughing at this. Dell's acceptable limits! That's just priceless!)

 

Originating Poster:

If this was happening to me, I would return for a replacement (new).

Don't you have a 7 day period for returns?

For the price you pay for a lappy' you shouldn't have to deal with this stuff..or the qualms of trying to fix.


Cin

 

thanks! Dell makes it so easy sometimes

like designing vents in the back of a notebook that get covered when the lid is open

or maybe, just maybe they did that on purpose to help with air circulation when the laptop isn't on!

 

Ok, going from similar problems with the Latitudes, which we have mostly found solutions for I have a couple of recommendations.

First, uninstall the IDT audio driver completely. Use the driver built into Vista, it works fine and there are no crashes or high CPU usage.

Check what version of the Intel Matrix Storage Manager you are using. If you are up to it, you might want to try this to see if it improves the latency. It made a huge difference for mine when I changed to this version.
- Uninstall the Intel Matrix Storage Manager from the Control Panel - Uninstall a Program
- Go to the device manager, go to IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, double click on "Intel ICH9....." and uninstall the driver. Check the box that says to delete the driver from your computer.
- Download: http://support.dell.com/support/dow...1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=41&fileid=261250
- Go back to the device manager and right click on SATA controller, and install the driver. Click to choose the driver you want to install and point windows to look into the folder that was created when you ran the download.

You should then have v8.2.2.1001 of the Intel Matrix Storage Manager.

NOTE: If you didn't understand the above instructions, DON'T try it!

Greg

Edit: You guys might want to take a look into the Latitude forums, specifically this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=297054&page=25

 

Were you planning on running Windows in Boot Camp on the MacBook? If so, forget it. Fine if you are just running a bit of software, but with you plugging in hardware and depending on sound, forget it.

I've ordered the 16". I wasn't too impressed with the latest 15" XPS. I'm just hoping to get by with the 16.

 

Per usual, Greg...great information!
I guess I'm pretty luck this hasn't happened to me.


Cin

 

Thanks Cin'. I made an edit on my post on the previous page, but you had already posted.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=297054&page=25

Check out that thread, it's basically all about the latency in the Latitudes.

Greg

 

This laptop uses an nvidia based chipset not intel. If the intel matrix storage manager is installed there will be some serious problems

Is this laptop the first to ship with windows with the mcp79mx chipset? I hope not. I bet the hanging problems are due to nvidia vista drivers but I haven't seen anyone do any troubleshooting yet.

I note that nvidia has a newer driver for the video card than the one dell is providing (version 179.28 instead of 176.89). Maybe worth trying an upgrade for starters.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_notebook_winvista64_179.28_beta.html

 

Err, better not follow those instructions and install any intel drivers on this nvidia based notebook.

 

Thanks, I will check it out

Cin

 

This laptop does not have a broadcom wireless lan card, or intel chipset, so any broadcom or intel driver issues affecting latency do not apply here.

 

I understand. And, he was trying to be *helpful*


Cin

 

As was I. I did post the broadcom comment early but apparently the point didn't hit home and needed to be made more clearly.

In any case, in the interest of being helpful, I think one could try disabling devices in the device manager to see if one could pinpoint one that is causing latency.

 

Thank you, for the followup ~ and further information!
It is very helpful..and I understand your wanting to get this info' across!

Cin

 

what was wrong with it?

 

So far, the real horror is how this thread went horribly off track.

This is the 'Studio XPS 13 horror thread'. Let's keep it scary.

If you follow the course of trying to fix that machine you will spend all of your time trying a whole slew of software changes, and your 21 days will expire. I always try to help, but on this one I would throw in the towel. If you disabled all of your cards and that DPC latency is still affecting your audio, it isn't going to ever be right. Most people that buy that thing are not going to try to record their guitar on it.

I see it as two options:

A. Live with the fact that you won't be recording guitar on it.
B. Get a machine that will allow recording.

That thing is a ticking time bomb! For the love of God, get rid of it! (Is that scary enough?)

(Is that scary enough?)

 

That was wierd. Someone posted after me, and they quoted me. I realized they quoted me so I went back and replaced the line they quoted. Now their post is gone?

 

Sure it is !!

Thank you for backing me up, ( is it correct in english ?), I spent the whole morning testing the XPS, and those are the results.

I got my XPS up and running for at least 8 hour, powering it down for 30 minutes during lunch, and no freezes so far.
Temps look good to me, but keep in mind we're in winter here, and ext/int temperature are 6C/19C

Sensor Value Min Max
ACPI
Temperatures
THRM 54 °C (129 °F) 54 °C (129 °F) 56 °C (132 °F)
Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo P8600
Temperatures
Core #0 44 °C (111 °F) 44 °C (111 °F) 51 °C (123 °F)
Core #1 39 °C (102 °F) 39 °C (102 °F) 50 °C (121 °F)
GeForce 9500M (GF 9200MGS + GF 9400MG)
Temperatures
GPU Core 57 °C (134 °F) 57 °C (134 °F) 57 °C (134 °F)
GeForce 9500M (GF 9400MG + GF 9200MGS)
Temperatures
GPU Core 57 °C (134 °F) 56 °C (132 °F) 58 °C (136 °F)

It puzzles me the reason why it did not freeze yet today, while yesterday it happened at least 3 times ina row in 10 minutes !!

Anyway, got reply from support people regarding the earphones/cover issue, and certainly they simply are following a schema, since they told me to update bios and IDT driver, which was the first thing I did..
Anyway I asked for instructions to possibly return the notebook, even if I'm not so sure if it will be an easy goal to achieve : the jurisdiction on "when" you can return "what" is not that clear, since commercial contract and jurisdiction is gibberish to me
Anyone can clarify ?

Last, I'd like to introduce a new element that really knocked me down : memory availability.

Brief, my old inspiron 6000 2 Gigs ram, has the same amount of memory available as this 4 Gigs XPS.

I own another desktop PC, with a quad processor, and 4 Gigs with winXP.
The total RAM reported is 3.406.252 (K) due to a 32 bit addressing limitation I guess, however the available memory is 2.600.344 (k); seems fair. I can let two VmWare session running simultaneosly 24/24 ( one for eMule, one for Torrent ).

With the XPS, no apps running, the total RAM reported is 2301 (MB) with only 1200 (MB) available !!! ??
With only one Vmware session with 1024 Mb of virtual ram, I run out of memory and start to heavily paging !!
Ok, now I know that the graphic cards are sharing the memory with the MB. (anyway it was not advertised in dell's site), so let's say that 1X256 MB for each card is wasted....you do the math : something is wrong here.
Am I missing something ? Can anybody take a look at his taskmanager and report the amount of ram ?
Oh...and what if I decided for 2 Gigs of ram, instead of 4 ? What sluggish sistem could it be with only 2 Gigs ( which, is a commercial option in dell's site...)

Ciao !!
Andrea

 

Biko,

I am interested to hear more about some of computer recording issues you are facing. I also plan do use this machine for some multi-track recording using my PreSounus FP10 (firepod) firewire interface.

Here's some of my thoughts.

First of all you got a lemon. Just return it and get a new one if you still can.

Second, that Frog Rock thing is a piece of junk. USB in general is not cut out for recording interfaces. However, years ago i used an M-audio Duo USB on a Dell M60 and it worked flawlessly. I had simultaneous tracks (2) recording while playing back 10 - 15 tracks with zero latency (at least to the human ear). Any way lately I've been using firewire systems. This PreSonus Firepod is nice. I bought it used for $300 and the capabilities are pretty unbelievable. I'm still using it on my 5 year old precision m60 but I'm ready for an upgrade.

You should take a look at that M-Audio Duo USB or something with firewire. Usually you might be able to find a deal on ebay or craigslist if you search around a little.

Anyway good luck.

 

Hello, thanx for replying.

I know that the RockFrog is no more than a toy, but what I wanted to point out, is that, regardless of the "hissing" of the A/D converter, I did not have any Latency issue in my old Inspiron 6000.

I normally use M-Audio Firewire 410 hardware, and it is a real bang for the buck. No latency, excellent A/D converter, some issue with intel chipset, tho...but on my desktop PC I added a nvidia based card...et voila'...

Ciao, Andrea

 

jbd3030 is right about M-Audio. M-Audio is pretty good for USB audio interface also and not so expensive. Alot of people swear by their M-Box.

About your lack of freezes - what troubles me about your max temps is we don't know yet what they look like if you hit that machine with a heavy load.

I want you to blast that thing with 3Dmark 2005, or something that will get it cooking. Then we'll see some temps and be able to see a clearer picture of how deep you're in. But I still maintain - send that baby back.

 

It was me....I hit return by mistake and sent the message prematurely....I deleted and posted it complete then...sorry !!

Andrea

 

No problem. It all makes sense. When I saw your post after mine I saw that it had to have been your post.

If you're going to keep that thing (Don't do it), let's see those load temps. They will let us know if there are thermal issues. You need to know if you have thermal problems ASAP.

 

I asked for an advice two posts ago, since I never returned anything that wasn't broken ( it is apparently, but to return it instead of sinking in the sluggish support I must pretend it is..)...

Anyway I start thinking temps are not the problem : my xps is working quite heavily since 9 a.m. ( almost ten hours) and no freeze at all.

Follow me :
I normally use Acronis True Image to save boot partition images and it helped me trough a lot of scary moment in my IT life...
This morning I had a warning from TI that the "index was corrupt".
I don't know what index it referred to, but anyway it made sense since I had to abruptly shut it down several times, as said.
I run a checkdisk forcing correction of sectors and and now I still got "index corrupted" error with TI, but no more freeze.
I don't know..

Andrea

 

I can't stress this enough - you can't polish a turd. For the love of silicon, return that bomb before you own it for good!

Disk errors like that = bad news.

 

Sorry, I wasn't aware of the different chipset. I assumed that since the problems were practically identical that they were the same chipset.

The audio driver solution still stands though, uninstall it and use the driver built into Vista.

Has anyone done a clean install of Vista or any other OS and checked the latency? People are having much better luck with latency on Windows 7, and I'm wondering if it's the same situation for XP (if XP can be installed).

Greg

 

Good to know. It doesnt' surprise me though. XP is way better with DPC calls than Vista. I wonder how WIndows 7 will stack up against XP.

 

Ok guys, now some really really bad news for the musician out there : the firewire data flux is buggy as well as the usb one.

Since the turd did not hang today, even when encoding a 2 GB .vob file, I was about to say to myself : well...wth...I can live with USB latency problems, anyway if I'm playing live, I'd use the M-Audio Firewire 410, so let's test the behaviour in such mode..

So, connected the 410 to the XPS firewire port, Installed latest M-Audio drivers for vista, installed IK Amplitube ( what a piece of sw for the guitarists !!), reboot and ..ready to plug my Strato to the M-Audio.

Well...the behaviour is exactly the same as the USB ports with the other Audio interface ( the RockFrog) : a measured click/pop every 2 seconds...it followed a pattern, the same pattern revealed by the fantastic Thesycon's DPC Latency Checker ( http://www.thesycon.de/eng/free_download.shtml ) which, of course was right.
I then went to the bios settings and disabled ALL, rebooted but no way, the "diabolic pattern" was still there...so, gentleman, it is not a conflict with the wireless card or USB port or anything else, this for sure..
Tomorrow I will call Dell. I think it is not worth the wait for proper drivers..

Hope it help ( if I read a post like this, I'd probably never order the XPS13)

Ciao

Andrea

 

Greg, how do you force vista driver installation instead of the IDT one ?

tnx

Andrea

 

The touch pad would malfunction every time I closed the lid and reopened. It seemed to large and heavy for the screen. It seemed clunky. I didn't like the feel of the keyboard. I didn't like the feel of the touch pad. I didn't like the way it closed magnetically instead of a latch. The screen was pretty nice, but only after I went through hell to get the good version. Seems like there was some other stuff to complain about, but I can't think of what it was.

 

Hi, as you may already have read, it seems that the XPS line is affected with latency problems that make almost impossible to use them for audio/video streaming pourpose.
It might be a driver issue, but at the moment it seems that some systems are affected.
The only way to test it, apart from ripping a film from a camera or playing guitar in a USB/Firewire audio I/F is to run this tiny utility called Thesycon DPC Latency Checker :

http://www.thesycon.de/eng/free_download.shtml

I quote from thesicon website :
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thesycon's DPC Latency Checker is a Windows tool that analyses the capabilities of a computer system to handle real-time data streams properly. It may help to find the cause for interruptions in real-time audio and video streams, also known as drop-outs.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mine is flawed, of course, so I can't use my XPS for one of the purposes I buyed it : recording music.

Can you please test and report here ? I'm seriously evaluating the possibility to return it, and wanted to have a "poll result" before calling them..

Thank you so much !!
Andrea

P.S
The utility runs in all the PC, not only in the XPS line!!

P.S. 2
Sorry for the mistake in the title, I'm not native english speaker..

 

wow that sucks, but all too familiar

i hope the XPS 13 works out for you, but it does sound scary and people have been eerily quiet about it.

 

I still recommend you try to disable the drivers in the device manager one by one to figure out what is causing the latency. Turns out this is also the recommendation on the DPC latency checker web page.

If that doesn't find it you may have to resort to disabling windows services. I think it's worthwhile to try and figure out what is causing the latency yourself rather than hope that dell will find it some day.

 

Ciao, Andrea,
You don't need to force it, simply uninstall the other driver, and Vista will use its native one.
Another thing: get rid of Vista, it's crap. Either return to XP or install Windows 7 beta, and see if you still have those latency issues. You got nothing to lose, try it! Ciao!