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BIOS BUG REPORT: XPS 15 9550, CPU Speed capped after switching from battery to AC power
I noticed a very similar bug for a Dell Latitude posted on this forum and am shocked that Dell has not fixed these bios bugs.
I have a brand new XPS 15 9550 and I noticed that when you connect AC power after being on battery power, the CPU frequency gets capped at 1.69 GHz as opposed to the usual 3.5 GHz. The only way to fix this is to then reboot or sleep/resume the system. What is the best way to report this BIOS bug to Dell? There has to be some way to get Dell to fix the issue in a BIOS update.
I have found several other users also complaining of this same issue:
forum.notebookreview.com/.../help-needed-from-new-xps-owners-report-serious-bios-bug-to-dell.783715
I really hope Dell fixes this issue since it is unacceptable for Dell to sell such an expensive and premium machine with a glaring firmware bug that turns your i7 performance into a Pentium level of performance.
boed
29 Posts
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January 3rd, 2016 09:00
Does it seem odd Dell doesn't have the bios on their support page?
Draek
11 Posts
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January 3rd, 2016 09:00
Just bought a XPS 15 9550 from Microsoft Store.
Had the same problem, upgraded the firmware to 1.1.15 and it works fine now.
Draek
11 Posts
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January 3rd, 2016 10:00
Not to me. I don't believe dell assigns resources to actually actively communicate and follow users issues on the forums. They mostly wait for you to come to them angry before they spring into action.
They are more like a turtle that hides all their sensitive parts in the shell when things go wrong.
They aren't proactive.
The best way to get good support from Dell, is to purchase Premium Support, and contact their English Speaking techs in the US for a premium price.
Otherwise you get India/Malaysa, and those folks there could give a *** about your problems. There is zero quality control of those analysis, no one ever gets fired or reprimanded for treating someone poorly on the phone. They hire staff that can barely speak English, as "good enough".
Your best bet is to always handle the problems yourself. Learn IT, learn hardware/drivers for yourself so you can fix most of your own problems.
elter
18 Posts
0
January 3rd, 2016 12:00
I don't think it's related. I know 100% reproducible way on 1.0.7 to get blue screen and knockout bluetooth mouse. Just go to Intel graphics control panel and somewhere under options you can find "system information " or something similiar, click on it and you'll get bsod. To bring the mouse back I had to unpair it, reboot and pair again
imtribble
3 Posts
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January 3rd, 2016 13:00
I managed to get the latest bios update by going to the Device Manager on Win 10 and clicking on System Firmware and then selecting update firmware. I'm at 1.0.15 now.
BigDaddyJ68
3 Posts
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January 3rd, 2016 19:00
My problem turned out to be the latest Nvidia driver that cam out last week. Seems to hit mostly with Adobe apps like Photoshop. If anyone starts seeing this roll back to the last Nvidia driver in device manager.
RaymondCDijkstra
8 Posts
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January 4th, 2016 01:00
Or use the latest NVidia driver & delete or rename sniffer.exe in the Adobe directory. Adobe has sometimes (for years) problems with machines with multiple GPU cards & certain drivers. Adobe causes a BSOD (kernel_security_check_failure)
DELL-Colin Hu
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351 Posts
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January 4th, 2016 07:00
Hi Everyone,
I was away for the Holidays, but have came back today.
I know the Mid-Dec date I was given for the BIOS has been missed and I apologise for that, it looks like the update has taken longer than expected to be ready.
The 01.01.15 update that people are getting through Windows Update; ***EDITED***don't install it as it is a partial update. Only install the BIOS update through the Dell Support Site
BigDaddyJ68
3 Posts
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January 4th, 2016 19:00
"Or use the latest NVidia driver & delete or rename sniffer.exe in the Adobe directory. Adobe has sometimes (for years) problems with machines with multiple GPU cards & certain drivers. Adobe causes a BSOD (kernel_security_check_failure)"
For me it was an issue when running Handbrake or Lightroom. In the Nivida forums others are reporting issues with other programs as well.
SkeeterHarris
29 Posts
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January 5th, 2016 08:00
Hi Colin,
Well this is great news and thanks for the update! It's taken some time but good things come to those that wait. :-)
Cheers
bapts
1 Message
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January 6th, 2016 05:00
Fix CPU i7 CPU performance became low after AC remove and insert.
Can someone confirm this fix also work for the i5 CPU ???
Manalive
1 Message
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January 6th, 2016 15:00
Go ahead install it, i5 is flying now, hitting 3.12ghz all the time, on battery and AC. Was going to sell this laptop keeping it now.
Gadfu
8 Posts
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January 7th, 2016 03:00
First of all thanks for the update.
I can confirm that some issues were resolved. Battery life increase is quite noticable from what I can say by now - like about an hour more than before.
However:
CPU Speed gets still capped to 1.69GHz on battery, but at least goes back up to 3.1GHz, as soon as its plugged in.
The bios boot time has pretty much tripled from about 10 seconds to more than 30 seconds. I've already spoken to dell tech support, who are pretty much clueless. ***, my 4 year old 800€ laptop boots within 4 seconds while my brand new 2200€ machine takes 30 *** seconds to even initialize Windows?
My config is: UHD Display, 6700HQ, 512GB SSD (PM951), 16GB RAM.
Furthermore one out of three boot attempts leads to being stuck at the dell logo for minutes until I reboot. This has been this way before the bios update, but I was hoping the update would resolve this issue aswell. I ran this dell diagnostics software from the boot menu and it gave me an error for the SSD, however the dell tech support guy told me, the software doesn't work for NVMe drives yet, so I cannot even tell if it's a defective SSD or some software hickup.
May be related to point 5 in Colins list.
Has anyone else experienced this kind of behaviour? Seems like the boot time increase is related to the bios update in some form. Dell tech support will call me back later today, so I'll keep you folks updated on this issue.
Kind regards
elter
18 Posts
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January 7th, 2016 06:00
It shouldn't be a problem if you have stock ssd in Intel RST mode. If you had this problem before, than it probably has nothing to do with the update itself. I have the same config and BIOS boot time has always been around 10 secs. On notebook review forum many users updated to 1.1.15 and only those who had non standard config (950 Pro SSD, stock SSD in AHCI etc) reported similiar problems
Gadfu
8 Posts
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January 7th, 2016 06:00
So, after having another call with the dell tech guy, he confirmed that they have had multiple reports of in fact much slower booting after the bios update as well as being stuck at the dell logo when booting.
According to him dell is working on yet another bios update that should resolve that issue plus some other things. It will likely take at least another few weeks to be finished...
Edit: He also mentioned that reinstalling Windows in Legacy BIOS Mode would resolve the issue of being stuck at the cost of not having Fast Boot.