XPS15 (9550) faster boot up time with new bios and chipset drivers

So i went ahead and flash my bios with latest available on Dell site (confusingly still 1.1.15) and updated the Intel chipset and thermal drivers, all three that came out last week.

So now my bootup time is fast! The task manager last bios startup time now shows 9s instead of 20s!

Wow, i cant be the only one?

 

Same experience - much faster

 

yes, my boot time is also roughly halved with the latest updates. just over 10secs

 

10 secs.

 

I just checked mine and its at 15s - Did you guys change the bios setting to skip some of the startup initializations?

 

where are you seeing this?

 

12 seconds for me with a 950 PRO and AHCI setting is BIOS.

 

I only disabled sata ports since they are useless for XPS15.
I use thorough boot and also 0s delay.

 

In task manager and I think in start up tab

 

Same 12.8 with a 950 pro, I will go tinker in the BIOS later as I didn't reset it.

 

Why are using AHCI setting instead of NVMe for 950 Pro?

 

nvme drivers do not work in RAID so you use AHCI, windows installs the native nvme driver during install.

As it happens Samsung replied today saying they need to try and replicate the issue with their driver and to use the windows one for now.

 

Got ya. I am not really tech-savyy, you see. Could you clarify smth for me? 950 pro is one fast mofo. Why would you want such powerful SSD to work in RAID anyway?

 

I don't get why should I use AHCI instead of RAID. Im getting 1800 read and 1000 write on my PM951 1Tb. What difference would it make to me? My boot time is 11 seconds

 

I am pretty sure I'm missing smth here, but can't you just use it in NVMe and not AHCI/RAID?

 

I think the xps 15 doesn't support NVMe boot

 

Is that smth that can be fixed by BIOS or firmware update?

 

I don't know, but if It was, Dell would already fixed it. I think...

 

ah, i see

i think my current drivers are a bit older than the latest as i did a clean install abt 10 days ago or so? my bios is the latest, i think though.

in any case, i'm clocking in at 11.7 seconds w/ AHCI, 951

 

I have the 1tb PM951 NVMe and my boot time is 10.2 seconds.

 

Are you in RAID mode? Do you have any reboot issues?

 

I'm on RAID and no problems here

 

May I ask where did you downloaded Intel chipset drivers from? I were trying to get it from Intel directly but cant find the right one, I don't trust dell's intel chipset drivers.

 

Hey guys,

I downloaded in installed the new intel chipset/tehrmal drivers. However, when i check system devices..seems like the drivers haven't been updated? Where can i see info regarding these drivers on my computer once installed?

******PS: newer BIOS on dell website feb. 5. After installing this bios, there is no error and it shows up under system information!!!***********

 

11 till 12.6 seconds (shown in startup/task manager). It's horrible long time for loading the bios. My older HP notebook from 2013 with hdd has only 3.6 seconds. An other from Acer 2015 has 3.5 seconds. Is this normal for Dell notebooks?

 

Still clocking 7.2 seconds - sometimes 7.3 seconds here i5 - 240GB SanDisk Ultra II Sata.

 

I can't get under 19 seconds bios boot time. It is usually 19.8.

i7/256ssd/1080p

Running AHCI with all the latest Dell updates not Samsung nvme. Legacy boot, disabled SATA ports, secure boot off. Does anyone else have a blinking curser on the top left of the screen between the dell logo screen and the window splash? Usually blinks 3 or 4 times.

Rock solid stability though, 0 BSOD's ever.

Devices and printers screen also takes forever to open. Using generic audio driver instead of Realtech. Seemed to improve a little after deleting xbox from media devices.

Old latitude e6500 runs faster than this thing.

 

I stumbled on this after wondering why my 9550 was taking so long to POST. REALLY LONG. Using the tip about checking the startup tab of Task Manager, my BIOS time was 46.5 seconds!!!!! UNACCEPTABLE, especially with a 950PRO set to AHCI.

I changed the POST from Thorough to Minimal and disabled Legacy Boot ROM. Now, I have 12.1 seconds. That's better, but how are people getting 7 seconds?

Now, CAN SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN why there isn't a NVMe drive option in the BIOS? NVMe is not ATA, or AHCI or RAID. Why does AHCI even work? Shouldn't there be a little bubble to click for "NVMe"? If Dell doesn't support NVMe boot then why do they ship the PM951 in it?

I am also using the Samsung NVMe driver in Windows 10. Is that bad or is there a problem I should know about?

Lastly, how does a driver affect POST time? POST is BEFORE drivers load.

 

I get about 10 seconds POST with RAID. However, when I restart it does nothing for like 30 seconds before showing the Dell logo.

 

This is not boot time, it's the time to the swirling Windows loading icon. 12 seconds is average.

Read through all the 9550 threads and you will find your answers.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

 

Yes, I know it's not boot time. It's the time the system stays in POST until the swirling dots begin. Like Eason, a warm reboot/restart still has a very LONG POST time (40+ seconds).

Really? Read through all the threads? Thanks for your AWESOME advice.

 

you will find 4-5 active ones, I took the time to go through them all while I was waiting for delivery so I had a head start on the usual Dell issues.

Yes my advice is AWESOME, thanks for noticing

NVMe - PCI Express via google

 

I've done my research on NVMe, which is why I questioned the BIOS not having a choice for NVMe in the drive configuration settings. There is only AHCI and RAID (and disabled). Disabled still allows the drive to boot, so that tells me that none of those settings really matter with regards to the NVMe drive.

With regards to POST-time issues, I need to figure out why warm starts are agonizingly slow and cold starts are decent (not great, but decent).

 

did you install the Samsung NVMe driver s that borked my reboots even with a 950 pro in use, Samsungs official response via my service partner login is "we can't replicate it so use the windows driver as the performance is nearly the same"

 

It's the Samsung driver that causes the issue. But I keep it as I have seen a huge (factor 5+) performance difference in database applications.

 

Yes. I have the 950 PRO with the official Samsung driver. How can a driver cause POST to be delayed? POST is before the computer even begins to load drivers...

 

I'm willing to try removing the Samsung driver...should I just do a normal uninstall of the software or do a "roll back" of the driver in device manager?

 

it isn't the post on reboot, it's a hang at shutdown preventing the power cycle, I think I had to uninstall ticking delete driver then reboot.

 

Ahhhh...never thought of it that way. I'll try it now. If that's the case, you can let Samsung know that there are TWO people with this bug.

 

Seems to have done the trick. I reran ATTO benchmarks and they're the same as with the Samsung NVMe driver (after 64KB, all tests run about 1.55GB/s WRITE and 2.5GB/s READ). Still pretty damn fast!!

Do you know what, exactly, the Samsung driver buys us? I had read some say it boosted their benchmarks, but mine seem to be maxed out either way.

 

I benchmarked the same so I didn't care, and I told samsung that I was not alone, maybe contact them as well as the more that do will prompt them to troubleshoot it.

 

Seems to have done the trick. I reran ATTO benchmarks and they're the same as with the Samsung NVMe driver (after 64KB, all tests run about 1.55GB/s WRITE and 2.5GB/s READ). Still pretty dam

Roger that. Thanks for your suggestions--you deserve some rep!

 

It's strange, I installed the samsung driver when I was trying AHCI, but I uninstalled it. However, my computer is still having that shutdown hang. I'll try uninstalling the driver in device manager.

edit: it didn't give me any option to "delete drivers" and I still have the shutdown hang. What's up with this?

 

try manually installing the windows driver via the update option.

 

You talking about the controller -> nvme controller, and installing from the Intel RST zip, right?

Thanks.

 

Not the RST, the standard Windows driver...

 

Right, under storage controller there's intel RAID (RST I assume) and microsoft storage spaces. Which am I supposed to uninstall?

 

under storage controllers you want to have "Standard NVM Express Controller" instead of the samsung one.
But it seems you are in raid mode so it doesn't apply as the raid driver it controlling things.

 

I thought we were talking about the long pause before restarting when in RAID mode lol.

 

switch to ahci with the windows driver and see what happens.