XPS 15 9550 Freezes randomly

Also,

Keep a eye on the Disk being 100%, see image below:

When the computer freeze again, use the Processes tab (Task Manager) to identify which programs are consuming more memory, disk and network in real time. Please click on the Dell video below:

I'm having the exact same issue.  Newest drivers on everything, newest bios, and a 2 week old fresh install of win10.  I've had countless issues with this laptop.  I've owned over a dozen computers in the last 10 years, but have had more issues with this machine than any of my other machines by far.  Its a constant struggle to keep this thing happy...

Thanks for the suggestion, but it doesn't help because since the computer is frozen, you can't launch Task Manager.  Seems to be something with the Dell XPS 15 9550 hardware or drivers since any other Windows 10 computer with the same programs installed doesn't have this periodic freeze problem.

I have the same problem. I bought XPS a year ago. Since december I had slowdowns and problems with 1607 update, plus a bunch of BSOD that made me format and re-install windows 10, and since then I started having freezes together with BSOD. I finally opened a ticket, and after a couple of hours they established that it could be a motherboard or memory issue. This afternoon the technician substituted motherboard and one of the 2 memory banks, and it looked like working, but after a 10 minutes of Prime95 run a freezer again. This time, no mouse pointer move at all (other times, could nove mouse but no click anywhere).

My conf is

Skylake 6700HQ, 16gb DDR4, Samsung pm951 512gb, 4k touchscreeen

My suspect is the SSD causing issues. Or bad luck, and the responsible is the memory bank left unchanged (very unlikely, though).

Very very bad situation. I am in trouble, because I need to complete a job for next monday, and I will not.

I've got the same problem.  The mouse moves but you can't click anything and nothing on the screen is updating.  It's Windows 10.  It's fully patched (including driver updates from Dell).  

For me, it seems to happen when 1) it's on AC power and it's been idle for a couple hours or 2) it's on battery and it's been idle for about 10 minutes.

The only thing you can do is a hard reset (hold down the power button for ~10 seconds).  

I have this issue too.. very frustrating

This time to try to catch the problem, I opened up Task Manager and left it running so that I could see the %s at the time of the computer freeze.  Like it does every day, the computer randomly froze (other than the ability to move the mouse) and the following were the utilization numbers at the time of freeze:   CPU 7% utilized, Memory 22% utilized Disk 1% utilized.     It lasted for about 3 minutes where I couldn't open, close, or use any apps, but I can still move the mouse around the screen.

Same issue here. I got the 9550 a month ago (32 GB RAM, 1TB CX2 LiteOn SSD). It freezes every here and then. I can then barely move the mouse pointer nor do anything else with the machine.  I can easily reproduce it with CrystalDiskMark - every time there is a read-write test in progress the mouse and the machine freezes. It works in the 5sec pauses CrystalDiskMark puts between the different tests. This suggests a disk related issue IMO.

I found an old discussion about this here - seems to be an old problem:
forum.notebookreview.com/.../

Try running diagnostics in BIOS if it finds sth (F12 after boot).

With SSD in RAID, try updating Intel RST.

With SSD in AHCI, check the NVMe driver - get one from the SSD manufacturer - but the latest Samsung v2.1 seems to be causing issues like this so try an older one, 2.0 or 1.4.

Hi, I found this thread while trying to fix a similar problem I had with my XPS 15 9550. On random occasions, often right after boot, it would be stuck in loop in which it would freeze for a few seconds, then have a short blackscreen, work for 2 seconds only to freeze again.

I tried the fixes that were suggested here, like downgrading the BIOS and reinstalling the NVIDA drivers - nothing worked.

Here is what worked for me:

After a few days I noticed that in between the black screens the color of the display would slightly change, wich led me to the preinstalled tool "Dell Premier Color". I quickly closed it from the task bar within two freezes and it actually stopped it! I continued to uninstall it completely and I haven't had a problem since, even with the latest BIOS installed.

I hope that helps somebody.

Hi,

the same problem has been floating around for a while now, only that I don't run my notebook with Windows but Linux. Not to mention, a colleague of mine faced the exact same issue as I did with Windows. The situation was the following:

The notebook ran flawlessly from ~Jan 2015 to summer 2016. Then it just froze up more and more. In the terminal, I was able to see that the currently running stuff simply could not access the disk anymore. There were continuous error messages saying my system was unable to access the file system (and thus the SSD). Sooner or later, the system completely crashed or froze. Only a hard reset helped.

So my hypothesis is that all the software still in the RAM (with reference to the situation above: "this and that still works") is still working. Everything else freezes.

I backed up the data from the notebook and subjected the disk to a stress test. This quickly led to the death of the SSD. The identical scenario happened with another XPS 9550 and Windows as OS in our company.

Well, after we got the money back from the warranty, we installed a completely different Samsung SSD (previously it was another SSD manufacturer). I thought it was the SSD at first, but it doesn't seem that way. Now after 2 to 3 months the game starts again with the freezing from the beginning. It's still very rare, but how long will it take for the Samsung SSD to tear up the hooves?

For me, this sounds very much like a problem with the driver / M. 2 interface of the XPS, or other hardware which is also involved. To cut a long story short, I hope there will be more testimonials that can narrow down the problem. Maybe someone from Dell can comment on it. Finally, there has been a BIOS update recently, which among other things should fix this problem (if I am not mistaken). So somebody should know something about it. However, this update-fix has remained unsuccessful with me.

I have to update this.

Suddendly some weeks ago I started to notice difficulty to use touchpad buttons, and it ended in the notorious battery swelling, a problem recognized by Dell itself. So I called Premium support, and this week they came to exchange battery. This was the third assistance intervention since march 2016, when I bought XPS 9550. Previously it was replaced: motherboard (2 times), one of 2 banks of RAM (1 time), Samsung SSD (1 time), now touchpad + battery.

Before this last intervention, I dual-booted my XPS with Ubuntu 16 LTS alongside Windows 10 Home 64, because with Windows freezes continued, but even with Linux freezes occured randomly.

After replace of battery, with no OS re-install, freezes have not ended...