New Dell XPS 8300 constantly Locking up.. help

Sorry Zee, that is the only way I know how to do it. For a hard rather than a soft reset of the bios you must cut all power to the motherboard and that requires unplugging all power and removing any power derived from batteries.

Anyone else know more than I (which isn't much....I'm just a computer user)?

how were you able to remove the cmos battery as mine is behind the ati graphics card and i cant get my hand down there, how did you do it?

Indeed many of us may owe thorkl a drink. It seems this locking up issue has been plaguing other Dell systems and not only the XPS 8300.

Thorkl, out of curiosity what made you think of resetting the BIOS to try and resolve this issue? I would never have thought of that. I was already resigned to having to go through the pain of doing a factory reset of the OS before your posted your suggestion.

BTW, can you believe it!? 3.5 hrs now and not a single lock up. My system is powering down the monitor like it should after 10 minutes and a shake of the mouse reawakens it as it should... with no freezing!

Aras1

You probably owe thorkl a drink! For future reference there is a Dell XPS 8300 Service Manual at this page
<http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xps8300/en/sm/index.htm>

The Technical Overview has an Inside View of Your Computer with the system board marked as item 5 (above the PCE Express Cards) and the diagram of System Board Components shows the round battery socket as 18.

You can click on the above images to see larger versions. Those who do not think to turn off and unplug their computer beforehand should first read the section on Before You Begin 

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

and how to remove the Computer Cover.

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

Glad this appears to have worked for you.

Cheers
Tom

Dell XPS 8300 | D02X8319 | XPS 8300 : Intel Core i7-2600 Processor(3.40GHz,8MB)
Memory : 8192MB (4x2048) 1333MHz DDR3 Dual Channel | Hard Drive : 2TB Dual Hard Drive Raid 0 "Stripe" (2x1TB - 7200RPM)
Optical Drive : 6X Blu-Ray RW (Blu-ray, DVD, CD read & write) & DVD+/-RW (DVD, CD read/write) optical drives
Wireless : Europe Dell Bluetooth 365 Card | Operating System : Windows 7 Ultimate (64 BIT)
Sound Card : Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music Card

Hi Zee,

My graphics card must be a little bit smaller than yours because although the graphics card is near the battery I was able to work around it. Is yours an ATI HD 5670?

BTW I just got off the phone with the Dell Tech who was helping me out on Thursday night and he said that he could believe that a hard reset of the bios might fix this as it completely refreshes the power distribution to all of the capacitors on the motherboard which might correct any imbalanced power distribution among the components.

He also said that they reset the bios not by removing the battery but by flashing the bios. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do that. Hopefully someone else following this issue can enlighten us.

Sorry I can't be more help.

i managed to take out and put in the cmos battery, the screen came up about something being reset, it said press F1 to continue and F2 to enter setup, so i clicked F1 and for the last 5 minutes the screen is just black, is this normal, i tried restarting the system, but same black screen?

Well, the lockup issue occurred immediately right after my (2nd) fresh Win7 reinstall while it didn't after my very first install before the trouble began.

So i concluded that the problem might be on the hardware side. The BIOS being the last layer before plunging your hands into the guts of the beast, i thought i might take a look into it.

I confirm, now my system's working like a charm as well. Maybe we can uncross our fingers now !

Zee,

Look at thorkl's post at the top of the 4th page of this thread. There he explains exactly what to do.

My XPS 8300 just locked up again :emotion-6:

It lasted without incident from 10:30 am to 3:15 pm. It locked up as I was clicking the link to reply to Zee.

How are the rest of you faring?

Everything's running ok as far as i'm concerned.

The computer's on for something like 8 hours now.

Reinstalling and backing up stuff.

I'll keep you guys tuned in case of incident.

Thorkl, Thank you for suggesting resetting the bios.  In the Dell XPS 8300 Service Manual there is a section on removing the Coin-Cell Battery which advises "Record all the screens in system setup" (see System Setup Utility) so that you can restore the correct settings afterwards. That also has a section on Clearing CMOS Passwords

that shows how to

1. Locate the 3-pin CMOS reset jumper (RTCRST) on the system board (see System Board Components).
2. Remove the 2-pin jumper plug from pins 2 and 3 and fix it on pins 1 and 2.
3. Wait for approximately five seconds to clear the CMOS setting.
4. Remove the 2-pin jumper plug from pins 1 and 2 and replace it on pins 2 and 3.

This may be the way to hard reset the bios without removing the battery in the Dell XPS 8300. Thanks again for this solution.
Cheers
Tom

Dell XPS 8300 | D02X8319 | XPS 8300 : Intel Core i7-2600 Processor(3.40GHz,8MB)
Memory : 8192MB (4x2048) 1333MHz DDR3 Dual Channel | Hard Drive : 2TB Dual Hard Drive Raid 0 "Stripe" (2x1TB - 7200RPM)
Optical Drive : 6X Blu-Ray RW (Blu-ray, DVD, CD read & write) & DVD+/-RW (DVD, CD read/write) optical drives
Wireless : Europe Dell Bluetooth 365 Card | Operating System : Windows 7 Ultimate (64 BIT)
Sound Card : Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music Card

Yep, looks like I am back to the same pattern. It just locked up again. This time lasted from 3:17 to 3:40 pm before locking up.

I am going to re-seat the CMOS battery again.

I suspect that we may have found a way to reset things but I don't think we have solved the issue that causes it in the first place and thus will be a recurring problem until the underlying issue is resolved.

We'll see how long this reset lasts and then I'll contact Dell Support again.

well, I tried the jumper pin method and it did bring me to setup right away but it was insufficient to do the job. The date and clock remained unchanged and... it locked up again.

I am going to try re-seating the battery one more time and if that doesn't do it I think I am done. My spouse is starting to look at me funny wondering when I am going to re-join my family and the household chores.

Have any of you tried replacing that motherboard battery with a new one? I saw a post somewhere on these forums recently, possibly by Dell Chris-M, that possibly some bad motherboard batteries may have been installed in some new Dell PCs. No promises this will fix it, but the battery is only US$2-$3 so cheap and easy to try.

Aras1- You mentioned iTunes was running when it froze. Did the audio start to stutter or slow down right before the freeze? That might indicate a bad video card (yes, I really meant video card).  

Ron

well im having a black screen issue, someone will come out next week to fix it, when will dell release a patch to fix this annoying problem, people dont spend $1000s or £1000s for this system for it to not work properly. lets get some proper answwers from dell as tech support is useless.

been over 3 hours on the phone to them today in total, been told a load of rubbish like its software updating or that the system will be slow for a few days and all kinds of rubbish. is there anyone from dell who actually knows what is going on because there is clearly a problem here.