Dell XPS 9550 "Critical Process Died" and other blue screen errors

As of 5/20/17 I’m happy to announce my Dell XPS 9550 laptop has finally proven to be nicely stable with Windows 10. I believe my post offers good news and quality information for many other Dell XPS 9550 owners and users as well as Dell, Microsoft, and Intel. Dell has taken some heat for XPS 9550 stability issues, but based on my experience, it isn’t necessarily Dell’s fault. The summary paragraph below gets right to the solution that worked for me. After that are details for anyone looking for more comprehensive information.

 

The summary:

The blue screen errors I’ve been experiencing appear to be a compound issue solved only when the IRST (Intel Rapid Storage Technology) and IMEC (Intel Management Engine Components) drivers have NOT been installed, AND only after Windows 10 has been updated to the Creator’s Update Edition. I think it is also important to install the latest Dell drivers, applications, and utilities associated with your Service Tag. And if your system includes a Toshiba XG3 SSD drive, I highly recommend you download and install the RD400/400A driver and SSDUtility available from OCZ.

 

The details:

My XPS runs an Intel core i7–6700HQ 2.6GHz 6th generation processor and uses a 1TB Toshiba XG3 SSD as its only internal drive (model THNSN51T02DU7). It came with Windows 10 pre-installed and the BIOS in RAID On mode. This is by far the fastest computer I’ve ever owned, but somewhere early in 2017 it became horribly unstable. I suspect a W10 update may have triggered the sudden frequent instability. The laptop would randomly freeze, blue screen and reboot. The error that occurred the most was “Critical Process Died”, but I also occasionally received the following errors: “DPC Watchdog Violation”, “Unexpected Store Exception”, “Stop Code 0x00001a” and “Kernel Data Inpage Error”. The system would arbitrarily freeze and reboot on average once in four hours without anything in particular seeming to trigger it. It seemed at times the laptop ran hotter and the fans ran harder than usual even while the computer was idle without any applications loaded and without any background tasks showing unusual activity. I believe I experienced fast battery utilization. I was also experiencing frequent pops, clicks and anomalies in the audio output of my MOTU 828x digital audio interface. None of these issues occur with my trusty clunker desktop that runs Windows 10 and all the same applications.

 

When I left the system booted into the BIOS GUI, the system never rebooted itself. Diagnostics never indicated a hardware failure. The Windows 10 Event Viewer never revealed any kind of a thermal or overheating issue. The event Viewer only showed a 41 kernel error that occurs when the system notices after the fact that it has suffered an unclean restart. This helped me to believe the blue screen errors were related to Windows and/or drivers.

 

Internet research revealed XPS 9550 owners suffering the same or similar blue screen errors but none of the many solutions offered worked for me and I found myself feeling strongly disappointed and frustrated. But I was determined to find a way to love this laptop. It took a lot of time-consuming research and experiments, partition deletions, clean installs, restorations, driver and software downloads, installations and uninstallations, and a myriad of experimental configuration setting changes including some in the BIOS. It required a rather methodical scientific approach and I had to keep detailed notes. Eventually I zeroed in on the culprits.

 

After my many failed efforts to stabilize my XPS in RAID On mode, I decided to switch the BIOS to ACHI mode. I then clean installed Windows 10 using the Dell ISO image and drivers specific for my Dell Service Tag. At first the system seemed stable again, but upon getting all the Windows 10 and Dell updates installed, the  blue screen errors returned, mostly “Critical Process Died”. The system suffers blue screens regardless of the RAID On vs. the ACHI mode.

 

Continued troubleshooting in ACHI mode eventually revealed that the “Critical Process Died” and “Unexpected Store Exception” blue screen errors were related to the Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST) and the Intel Management Engine Components (IMEC) drivers. Unfortunately, there were instances during my troubleshooting where it seemed that once a culprit application or driver was installed, uninstalling wouldn’t resolve the problem making it necessary to do a clean installation or to restore an OS backup made prior to the offending install. Therefore, it may not be enough to simply uninstall these drivers. It may be necessary to avoid them entirely until a future update hopefully resolves these problems.

 

Having determined the IRST and IMEC drivers were culprits, I restored back to a clean install. I kept my cable modem disconnected to prevent Windows 10 from updating and did NOT install the IRST or the IMEC divers. Once again the system was more stable, but still occasionally blue screened. But I strongly believe this is due in part to problems with earlier builds of Windows 10 because upon updating Windows 10 to the Creator’s Edition, all the errors completely stopped, until I again installed the IRST or IMEC drivers! Therefore, the blue screen errors appear to be a compound issue that is solved only when the IRST and IMEC drivers have not been installed AND only after Windows 10 is updated to the Creator’s Edition. Wow!

 

The audio pops and clicks in my MOTU 828X digital audio unit stopped after I disabled the TPM 2.0 (Trusted Platform Module) in the BIOS.

 

The “Kernel Data Inpage Error” was the result of my pagefile somehow becoming corrupt. This error stopped after deleting the corrupt pagefile and allowing Windows to re-create it. I suspect the corruption may have been caused by the IRST or the IMEC drivers and the resultant blue screen errors and unclean reboots. Or perhaps the Toshiba SSD wasn’t happy with the built-in Windows driver. I discovered the Toshiba XG3 SSD is supported by OCZ, a company related to Toshiba. From www.ocz.com I downloaded and installed the RD400/400A driver and SSDUtility for my Toshiba XG3. Nice utility! It shows the health, endurance and performance of the drive and allows tuning and custom configuration. The SSD performance has been fast and corruption-free ever since. XPS 9550 owners with a Samsung SSD have reported their problems stopped after installing a specific Samsung update. Perhaps the OCZ driver is the equivalent solution for those like me who have the Toshiba drive instead?

 

I have not yet tested to see if the IRST or IMEC drivers run reliably with the RD400/400A driver, but I believe the IRST doesn’t really offer much when in ACHI mode. I might one day put the system back in RAID On mode and see what happens with the IRST driver, but for now I’m quite satisfied with the system’s performance and see no reason to mess with it further.

 

If your system blue screens and reboots, it’s a good idea to run SFC /scannow from the Command Prompt in Admin mode to make sure your system files did not become corrupted which might eventually lead to a deteriorated system needing a clean install or restoration.

 

What brought stability to my XPS was to set the BIOS in ACHI mode and then clean install Windows 10 using the Dell W10 ISO image. It’s probably possible to achieve stability in RAID On mode, but I have not experimented to find out. I did the W10 clean install with my network disconnected to prevent Windows 10 from updating. I had all the necessary installation files already downloaded. I then installed the following in this order: Latest BIOS firmware (I am currently at 1.2.25, a recent release at this writing, but most of my troubleshooting was done on version 1.2.21). Toshiba (OCZ RD400) SSD NVMe driver and SSDUtility (from OCZ’s website). From Dell’s website based on my Service Tag: Thunderbolt Controller driver prerequisite to Thunderbolt firmware update (Chipset_Driver_7P7G7_WN32_15.3.39.250_A01), latest Thunderbolt Controller Firmware update, latest Thunderbolt Controller driver (it may possible to install the latest Thunderbolt driver prior to updating the Thunderbolt Controller firmware, but I felt it was safer to do it this way), Intel Serial IO driver, Intel 100 Series chipset driver, Realtek PCI-e Memory Card Reader driver, Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework driver, Intel HD Graphics 530/P530 driver, Wireless 1830 WiFi driver, Wireless 1830 Bluetooth Application, ST Microelectronics LNG3DMTR Motion Sensor driver, Dell Command Power Manager, Dell Foundation Services driver, Dell Help & Support Application.

 

I did not install the Intel HID Event Filter driver because Windows automatically installed a newer version. The Dell Audio driver caused a problem for me, so I instead allowed the built-in Windows 10 audio driver to handle the audio hardware, which it does just fine. I did not install the nVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M Graphics driver because Windows 10 automatically installed the exact same version. I opted not to install Dell Update, Dell System Detect, or Dell Support Assist.

 

At this point, I ran the system for a long time and found it was much more stable, but still prone to occasional blue screen errors. But once I connected to the Internet and updated Windows 10 to the Creator’s Edition with cumulative updates, the errors completely stopped. Ever since this laptop has been rock solid and has performed absolutely flawlessly for weeks! The issue with the system running hot and with fans running hard also appears to be fixed and the rapid battery usage issue has gone away.

 

It seems Windows 10 is initially configured so that if a blue screen error occurs, Windows will briefly flash the error code and then reboot. If you’re not holding a camera and sitting at your computer at the time of the error, you’re going to miss it! To make Windows wait at the error screen so you can make note of it before the system restarts, go to Control Panel / System and Security / System / Advanced system settings. Under “Startup and Recovery”, click “Settings”. Under “System failure”, uncheck:            (   ) Automatically restart. Next time a blue screen error occurs, you’ll be able to read the error code before letting the system restart.

 

SSD drives have a limit to the number of write operations that can occur. This translates to what is referred to as the “endurance” of the drive. My Toshiba SSD still has 98% of its endurance remaining, despite the higher-than-usual write activity I’ve put it through during these first 8 months of ownership. So I figure I’ll likely be dead before the drive is, but I still feel inclined to preserve its lifespan. So I now use the internal SSD almost exclusively for the Windows 10 OS alone. I use external USB 3.0 drives pretty much for everything else including backups. For $12 I added a 40 MB/s 8GB SDHC card in the Memory Card Reader, where I have moved the folder for Temporary Internet Files and created a cache location for Google Chrome. I now have fast web browsing and minimal impact on SSD endurance.

 

I am finally loving and enjoying a stable high-performance Dell XPS 9550 that is no longer freezing up.