Help! My new Dell Studio XPS 13 Laptop keeps on freezing up!

Hi BeyondxFlatline

I'm currently experiencing the exact same thing on my Dell Studio XPS 13 laptop, and seeing the exact same scenarios as you describe. It seems the system locks up quiet randomly. Usually lockups like this happens when you run ressource demanding games, but this doesn't seem to be the case. I have been running hwmonitor (http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php) to check if i could see any heat related symptons and eventhough this laptop seems to have higher temperatures than usual, they don't seem critical to me. I have experinced my laptop freeze when; when the system has been idle and i have returned and moved my external mouse, other seemingly random moments and even when running dell diagnostics . I have also experienced that my system won't bootup after it has froze and that i needed to wait a little while before i could boot it again. I haven't talked to tech support yet, but it seems it might soon be a good idea.

This forum thread may be of interest:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=348918

Hi everyone!

I had the same experience on my Dell Studio XPS 13 too where everything freezes up. Not even the cursor moves when the laptop get locked up. I tried to Ctrl+Alt+Del to get into Task Manager but to no avail. Eventually I have to force close everything buy pressing on the power-on button for at least 10s long. Then I will click the power-on again (sometimes once, sometimes twice) and the laptop works as normal (i think) again. It is so much of a hassle especially when I am working on my spreadsheet when everything froze.

I have come to observe 2 incidences when this freezing up thingy occur:

1) when I am installing a new program into the laptop. Once installed, in a few minutes or so (i didnt notice how long but just alittle while) the laptop get locked; and

2) when I am surfing websites where they seem to consumed lots of resourses (ie. in particular, Facebook).

I too have not gone back to Dell Tech Support for guidance. This is very dissappointing. I do not know whether is it Dell's issue or Microsoft Vista Home Premium SP1 giving us this problem.

If you guys have some leads into this issue, kindly share with me.

Thanks!

Robin Leow

Hi Leow

Try this: Turn off you XPS 13, take out the battery, and hold the power button for about 30 seconds. Reassemble and start it up again.
I did this with my laptop mentioned above, and it fixed it. It hasn't froze for weeks now.

Same thing happened to me and my Studio XPS 13 laptop.  It happened within a few days of getting the laptop.  I went ahead and tried re-installing the whole OS and drivers from scratch.  After re-installing the OS it no longer made it to the log in screen.  I ran the diagnostic utility and ran in to zero errors.  I re-installed once more and nothing improved.  The next day I called support only to have them tell me I needed to run the diagnostic utility again, I reluctantly did so after not finding anything the day before.  Well, as luck would have it the utility returned an error code of 2000-0146(DST Log contains previous...error(s)).  The support technician stated that this is inidicative of the hard drive going bad.  He immediately scheduled a replacement Hard drive to be sent to me.

I am not too confident that this freezing issue so many people are running is being caused by a whole string of defective hard drives, but what do I know.  The plastic packaging the laptops came did not seem like they would be too forgiving though.

The diagnostic tool is the one that the systems now have installed within BIOS. You can get to it through the Boot Options Menu when the system starts[F12].  It will beep and return error codes if anything is found.

I will post again what the results of the new hard drive are.

Hi mgarde,

Your suggestion seem to work for me too... thanks a lot! i have installed a few programs and updates and the laptop operated fine so far. Even the speed seem to improve.

If you do not mind, for knowledge, can you share with me why do we need to your prescribed procedure to overcome this problem?

Thanks again and have a great day!

Robin Leow

Got my new harddrive and everything that I was running into appears to have been fixed.  The laptop seems to be running as it should.  One thing I did also run into was when browsing using IE7, it was very very slow.  After poking around it seems to be more of a Vista issue than anything else.  I followed the procedure on the following website and the laptop has been running as fast as expected now, including web browsing:

http://www.petri.co.il/improve_windows_vista_network_performance.htm

J

UPDATE!!!

Here's an update of what has happened since I posted this thread. Dell sent one of their techs to my house to replace the entire motherboard. The tech replaced my motherboard and the instant that he was done guess what? It FROZE! So he suggested that I call dell's customer service and demanded a system exchange, which I did and they were willing to send me a new one. Two weeks later my new laptop arrived. I had so much hope and was looking forward to finally playing with my new toy. The first day I played with it everything worked fine and I thought to myself  "Okay, maybe I just had a defective computer". The very next day when I tried going on my computer it froze again and that whole problem started all over again. I tried doing everything mentioned here and nothing worked. I am just done trying to make this laptop work for me. I really don't have time to be dealing with this because I bought a laptop for school and work. Dell is in the process of doing a return for this purchase. If you still don't have luck with this particular computer I suggest you look for another one.

Quiet anoying how many issues come up with this brand new laptop.

I would have thought, DELL would release it tested and tweaked. But it turns out we are doing the ATP or BETA testing for them.

I have had nearly every issue with my Studio XPS 13 posted in the forums by now.

Bad WLAN login behaviour - Locking system regardless of action or system usage - not responding sense areas - not ejecting DVD - Bad vertical lines flashing on the Display. - lacking fps power with the SLI hybrid graphics

I really much feel tricked by DELL by now. I spend 1499,- EURO on the brand new Laptop and wanted to have my peace with a prebuild system.....well...no peace for me then!

While i post these lines, the SPACE-Bar is scrieking evvery time i press it...anoying sound i can tell...

I really hope, DELL fixes the issues in time. My two weeks of returning the system are gone, and i want a fully functional system for sure.

Mario.

update so far, just got of phone to tech in India:

81 mins on phone in total, no fix yet.

updated bios – , I ran mem test and it hung on Choose an option: Test Memory, Test System, Exit.

Wasn’t able to test system as requested as it had hung.

rebooted then techie connected to my machine and updated bios thinking this would fix problem, when i rebooted machine it hung on the windows splash screen to login.

am now running full test from the press "power and Fn key" at the same time.

will get a call back tomorrow morning, am not happy, if he can't fix it tomorrow or at least find out what the problem is I want my money back and will buy an apple mac

I know exactly what you mean!

Point is, i ordered a DELL to have absolute peace in using a PC/Laptop and not to keep it running.

Keeping it running is some kind of "sport" i used to do when i was young and needed the money...no, for sure now.

I wanted to take this one out of the box and be happy with it!

I phoned the DELL-Support and he told me to clear the SSD completely and reinstall the VISTA 64 from scratch.

I didn't believe him, but he insists on formating the SSD and reinstzalling Vista.

Well, i will see. The installation took till 3 o'clock last night.So i will report back, if any aprouval took place.

Hello to all -

I had the same worries before deciding to buy mine from BestBuy pre-built (here in the States for you UK and other folks). I had read up beforehand and found that if I was prepared with several critical updates in advance, especially applying the BIOS update first, that all would be well. So that is what I did, and - everything has run without a hitch! Note that mine did not have the 9500 SLI video option, that may make a difference for some.

Here are the updates I downloaded (from another set) and applied in this order (I chose to reboot after each update even though only a couple require it):

1.   BIOS A04 (2009-02-17)

2.   nVidia GeForce 9400M G driver v178.98-A05 (R215056)

3.   Dell_System-Software_A02_R214475

4.   IT8512 CIR Receiver (R196531)

5.   CREATIVE-LABS_INTEGRATED-WEB_A05_R207341

Hope this helps.....

Cheers,

Mark

I received remote assistance from Dell twice since purchasing the laptop from Best Buy 6 weeks ago.  They updated the bios first time around.  Second time, they updated the video card driver + tweaked the power settings to battery saver/lower performance a week ago.  My laptop froze twice over the past week - which is fewer than previously but still less than ideal.  I have made the sequenced updates suggested by fourells5 - will report back hopefully with good news.

Hello to all - I had the same worries before deciding to buy mine from BestBuy pre-built (here in the States for you UK and other folks). I had read up beforehand and found that if I was prepared with several critical updates in advance, especially applying the BIOS update first, that all would be well. So that is what I did, and - everything has run without a hitch! Note that mine did not have the 9500 SLI video option, that may make a difference for some. Here are the updates I downloaded (from another set) and applied in this order (I chose to reboot after each update even though only a couple require it): 1.   BIOS A04 (2009-02-17) 2.   nVidia GeForce 9400M G driver v178.98-A05 (R215056) 3.   Dell_System-Software_A02_R214475 4.   IT8512 CIR Receiver (R196531) 5.   CREATIVE-LABS_INTEGRATED-WEB_A05_R207341 Hope this helps..... Cheers, Mark

Try the latest BIOS update found here, and let us know how it goes.

Its still occuring. This is after installing the bios then reinstalling the operating system and all new drivers from the Dell website. Does it about twice a day and of course when I'm doing school work. Its starting to become an annoyance. Any idea when Dell will work this out?

After all I did, including the very latest BIOS update (A06), I was still having occasional lockups while using the 64-bit version of Vista. I asked Dell for the 32-bit version of Vista, reinstalled that plus all 32-bit specific drivers and applications ---- and (drum roll please):

No more lockups in the last two weeks! Plus the OS and applications all seem to load and function a little more quickly. I'll give it another 2-3 weeks and report back only if this [locking up] issue resurfaces.