Dell XPS 15 9550 CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED BSODs

Tons of blue screen issues with my new XPS 15 9550 too.  I'm also suffering from black screen crashes too, which seem to be caused by the NVIDIA 960m drivers.

I may have found the answer to the blue screens. I reset BIOS to defaults and changed the SATA controller to AHCI mode then reinstalled windows. Once she boots up for the first time, install the 950 pro driver from Samsung. Don't install Intel RST drivers. So far for a while day now, I have been stress testing the laptop and have had no BSODs. Also before resetting the BIOS, make sure it's the latest version. I'm currently running the latest P530 video driver from Dell and also the 358.64 960m driver from nVidia that gets automatically installed on first boot after WiFi driver is installed. Going to stay stock on the nVidia driver for a couple of days before updating it.

To fix random bluescreens on the Dell XPS 15 9550 its sufficient to install the latest SSD driver from Samsung NVMe Driver. I have no problems ever since.

Hi guys,

I experienced the BSOD  and tried Samsung NVMe SSD driver. YES the BSOD was gone, but turn to another symptom "freeze". Anyone has the same experience?

Hello,

have you updated to the latest Bios (A new version was released in August)?

What kind of freeze? Like completely frozen? Or frozen windows with mouse still working?

BR,

André

YES, I've updated the BIOS to the latest version.

The symptom of the freeze: the mouse cursor keeps circling like busy, cursor still can move, but cannot click any buttons or windows, system does not give any response.

Hi @Winson Chiou,

Did you ever solve this issue?  I have the exact same issue.

I was getting BSOD's with Critical Process Died.  I then installed the Samsumg NVMe driver and I now get the freezes exactly as you describe.

I'm not having much luck googling for a solution.

thanks,

Greg

Eldering, this is an old thread but the original problem seemed to have been solved.  At this point if it was related to a PCIe SSD you might check the Device Manager to see which model drive you have  how it is controlled.  Look in the drives section for a description and the Storage controllers section to see if it is running a NVMe or SATA.

If you are getting dump files from the BSODs could you put them on OneDrive and give us a link?  The does assume you are running Win 10

I have an NVMe Samsung SSD connected in the M.2 slot (NVMe SAMSUNG MZVPV256), additionally I have a SATA HDD installed that came with the laptop. I do not have a dump file because the PC just hangs, it does not create a BSOD. As far as I can see now there are no log files or dumps generated that are related to the hang, except from the message that there was an unexpected shutdown on the next boot. So I cannot tell what is causing the freezes.

When it hangs it starts with one application that 'is not responding' and I can still switch to another application that will then also stop responding. Also for a short while the taskbar will keep responding to the mouse. The mouse cursor keeps working for a long time, although nothing will respond to it.

If there is something I can do quickly I could try it when I first notice one application freezing, ie manually create a minidump. However, the odds are that it will not complete (or even start).

I've had a lot of issues when I first got the laptop (and installed the SSD) but I do not remember what exactly I did to resolve it. I think then it was mostly BSOD's and it was related to the SSD.

I have installed the Samsung NVMe driver, I will try uninstalling it and if that doesn't help I will try installing the Intel Rapid Storage files because I remember that had something to do with it.

Have you been watching Task Manager or the Resource Monitor to see if you can pick out something like drive activity or processor utilization during the freezes?

You can use the perfmon /rel in a run box to give you a graphic, if that will complete.

The M.2 drive can be run as PCIe or SATA, depending how the SATA controller is configured.  When you added the M.2 drive, did you move the original install to it and clean the other drive?  You might even consider removing the HDD during troubleshooting.

Any anti-viruses run?

One of the basic rules of troubleshooting is to make the system as simple as possible.  Removing or disabling devices is one way to do that.  Disable the Wifi adapter and disconnect the other drive.  If you have any mapped drives then undo those.

A virus could hide and survive  a clean install, especially with another drive present or even external drives used in the old and new installs.

Trying to work through this, the first step is to go through anything you might feel even could be involved.  Don't dismiss anything yet.

So, if it were to be some type of system corruption, it could be caused by memory or a processor problem.  If that was the case, the corruption would get worse over time.  Running a System File Check or a chkdsk may expose some of the corruption.

If it isn't one of those two items, it could be a drive situation.  If one drive was having a problem or conflicting in some manner, it could cause such problems.  Is the original drive an SDHD or Hybrid drive?  When you installed the M.2 drive, did it have a heatsink?

It may be some of the software you are using.  Did you run the system, after the reinstall, for a period to test prior to reloading any software?

A locked drive might mean you are trying to use the wrong build version to reset.  If Bitlocker was enabled it would show a lock on the drive in explorer.  

Does using one of the other desktops make any difference?

There is a utility you could use to watch the system, but it might freeze at the time you need it also.  It is called Process Monitor from System Internals which is a Microsoft branch.  It runs a real time log of system activity.

Let us know if you find anything..  I may have other thoughts but having some pertinent info would help.

It hung once when I opened a link in a new tab in MS Edge, once when I tried to push changes in a mercurial repository and once while Visual Studio was open but I was not actively using the PC. There were at least two times where I returned to my PC after a couple of hours and the screen was black and the laptop was still turned on but I could not 'wake' it anymore. And that all in less than 3 days after a fresh install.

I have installed Windows to the M.2 SSD drive with the HDD Sata drive disconnected (since I remembered the difficulties I had with my first install, which was in Q1 2016). I did a clean install. I could not do a 'Reset' because it said my hard disk was locked, and after a day I was unsuccessful to 'unlock' it.

Perfmon also only shows "Windows was not properly shut down".

Something else I remembered is that the Wifi adapter caused problems for me on my previous install, that was related to the power settings. It was already set to maximum performance now, but I have also turned off the option to power down the wifi.

I could temporarily disconnect the SATA drive if I move the files to an USB drive and work on that drive, but I am not quite sure how that will help (other than the possibility to get evidence that the disk interface is to blame). I've used several tools to test the drives and those did not find any problems.

My guess is that there is some kind of lock/mutex that causes the applications to freeze. Is there some kind of tool that I could run to determine which locks are blocking threads for the entire system? It will need to be something that runs continuously in the background or that can collect the information quickly. And that hopefully doesn't acquire the same lock when it runs.

Sadly enough I did a reinstall the other day and I am having these problems again as well... My fix earlier in this thread doesn't appear to work anymore though. Very sad to see this on a $2200 laptop. My goal today will be to find the fix again, I'll keep you guys posted!