XPS 12 Freezes when AC Adapter plugged in for Charging

Hi,

Is your problem solved? If solved, what was the fix?

I am facing similar issue with my Dell XPS12 and dell support is trying to resolve same with no success yet. 

Here are the problems I see -

No sorry Gopi. As you can see from this thread I have had no response. It sounds like we have the same issue. I have not tried your numbers 2 or 4 but will when I can. But I do have issues 1 and 3. It does not happen all the time. I had the power adapter replaced with no improvement. I also had the motherboard replaced and the problem seems to be less frequent but that could just be my imagination.

While I have a Dell XPS 12 the problem one is not mine, it is a friends that I don't see often, so I can't easily test it again, but hope to do so over the next few weeks. I actually bought 2 of these refurbished from the Dell Outlet and they both needed a technician. My first friend reported this problem all the time so I swapped units and they are now happy. I noticed the problem intermittently while I briefly used the unit and had the motherboard replaced. My 2nd friend has not reported the problem to me but they are a less heavy user and possibly always plug the charger in while booting. I need to see my friend and check again and will post back here the results when I do.

At the time I could not find any other posts about this. I can only assume it is a rare problem. The conclusion I had come to is it must be related to the actual power adapter socket in the chassis? But that would have to mean it is not part of the motherboard? If it is separate then I am then not sure if it is a replaceable part or if Dell would replace the chassis? If it is part of the motherboard, then after replacing the motherboard, I have no idea any more because how could you get a rare problem with 2 separate motherboards? Being a refurbished unit I can only assume this problem has existed from the very beginning and is why it was originally returned to Dell? Although the unit did have other problems that were caused by faulty memory.

Good luck with a solution. I will post back if I find out any more. I too feel like  :(

@asimplelife,

Thank you for the response!

My XPS12 is now almost 3 years old and was working perfectly fine until end of 2015 and then suddenly all of these 4 issues surfaced. All issues I see are not intermittent. Those are consistently reproducible at all times.

Dell support has escalated the issue to higher level and I am hoping they find a solution. I will update if the problem is solved.

Thanks,
Gopi Kori

I have just had some feedback from 2 separate posters on another forum where I had also listed this issue and they have both said that the charging port is a separate component. So if the problem is hardware that would make sense when replacing the motherboard and adapter has not improved things.

One of the posters also mentioned trying a fresh installation of windows to see if that removes the problem - ideally on a different msata ssd - but then that could put the warranty at risk.

And I forgot to mention that, in my case,  the DC power adapter port that you mentioned was also replaced along with the power adapter. That did not help.

I suspect whether windows re-installation will really help, as I see all problems consistently occurring on Ubuntu as well. Moreover its extremely costly affair in terms of time, to backup all data, install windows 8.0, and then upgrade to 8.1 and then to 10 online (this is the only valid install and upgrade path because my laptop came with 8.0) and again make it dual boot after installing Ubuntu plus setting up my work environment. 

I had forgotten that your machine was dual boot windows/ubuntu. As you say that tends to indicate a windows reinstall will not fix the problem. Same with you already having replaced the separate charging port.

Another suggestion I have had is the issue is caused by a faulty in the power circuit on the motherboard. That seems unlikely when I have had the same problem with 2 motherboards - although the second one was refurbished - but this seems to be such a rare problem.

You may be right. Its likely that second motherboard also has the same problem. Its quite possible because of Dell's policy that says the replacement parts provided under warranty are refurbished ones and not brand new.

Hi I have the new xps 15 with the issue of the laptop freezing after putting the adapter back in and also found if I unplugged and plugged in again and used trackpad straight away no issues.I have been working with pro support with little success but found what hopefully is the remedy.The strange thing is the laptop was still working as dell were remotely on it and I tried to replicate the freezing and while my end was 'frozen' the tech got me to type a sentence and when I replugged the adapter to un freeze I could see that he had opened the notepad and there was my sentence so. Very odd.

So far it's been a week and no issue so this fix hopefully has worked for me.

Go to the plan settings and click on advanced. Click the 'change settings unavailable' and then go through 1 by 1 and make all battery and power identical in settings.

If this does not work go to device manager and batteries. Disable the Microsoft ac adapter. If that does not work also uncheck Microsoft ACPI adapter. Still an issue just have the ACPI disabled.

Lastly from what I know to eliminate hardware is disable your cpu.Afraid I am unsure of the process.

Hope this helps.

Thankyou for the further information. Next time I see my friend who has the XPS 12 with this problem I will trial your suggestions and report back.

Guys thanks for the information. My laptop is picked up by dell couple weeks back for fixing it. If they find a solution I will post it here. Hope they do.

I have had the exact same problem as asimplelife. I have my settings so that driver, BIOS, etc updates do not automatically download and install. It had been a long time since I had updated so sometime around January 2016 I updated everything. That's when I started noticing the problem so I'm thinking it has something to do with one of the updates I had installed.

I would like to rollback whichever driver update is causing the problem if I could figure out which one it was. However, since it had been so long since I had updated everything there were too many for me to go through to figure out which one was causing the problem.

For those also having the problem did you also update any drivers/BIOS around the same time?

Side note, I'm not the most tech savvy person so keep that in mind if I'm misusing drivers, BIOS, etc.

Thanks for the information.

The XPS12 I have with the problem - and it's only been 1 of the 4 I have bought for people - has that problem immediately after a fresh reinstall using the Dell partition - although I did notice the problem was happening less - just as I noticed that it seemed to get worse over time. It's with a friend so I can't easily check it regularly now.

So maybe you could do a full backup of your current installation - it can be a little tricky - I found using Acronis 2016 worked well - you get a free trial so you don't have to buy it - then try resetting from the Dell partition. But if you are not comfortable with that and have no one to help you if anything goes wrong, then maybe that's going to be right for you.

Interest you mention drivers as I have just had a post about that from another forum that I will now add here;

"my 2 c would be to start looking at the switchable graphics. I have had nothing but trouble with them as MS will install and automatically update the drivers, and the updated drivers no longer support the switching.

afaik you have to uninstall both the intel HD and the amd/nvidia driver, then reinstall the intel then the amd/nvidia (the original from the dell site).

I would bet if you put windows 7 on it would work fine, as windows 8/10 introduced nothing but problems for these dual video systems."

Very interesting development (at least for me :)
I finally got to spend some time on that laptop with the freezing issue when you plug the charger in.
Now I know why it appears intermittent.
It only happens – when the desktop is active – and then it happens 100% of the time.
When an app is open – any app – and not minimised – it never happens.

Now I have no idea why that is happening.
Does that mean it must be software/operating system related?
It was happening in Windows 8.1 and now 10.

Started the process with Dell support this afternoon.
Ran the ePSA test which reported no problems.
But then my consultant seems to have gone home without telling me – and now I have to take this laptop with me – try and resolve this tomorrow – and then drive all the way back over here tomorrow to return it :(