XPS Desktops

[stormrider550]

I also have an XPS 8930 purchased on May 1 2019 that is freezing in the same way (mouse pointer and keyboard freezes for 3-5 seconds once every hour or so). There is nothing in the event log. It has done this since it was purchased. I was hoping there would be a software fix by now.

[dustynz]

So... Success I think

Stopped all the dell services, One at a time until the freeze stopped occuring

The culprit is

Dell SupportAssist Remediation service

Here are the logs, nice and predictable, As you can see I should have been expecting a freeze between 2,5 or three hours and I have just hit 4 hours. This is the second time I have run the test, Same answer. Now to restart the desktop and only stop this service then restest.

======Restarted : 10/06/2019 18:48:54
Freeze: 1 / 36134 : 10/06/2019 19:54:53 , 6151.2965
Freeze: 2 / 135155 : 10/06/2019 22:55:34 , 6154.4344
Freeze: 3 / 234181 : 10/07/2019 01:56:16 , 6113.5992
Freeze: 4 / 333204 : 10/07/2019 04:56:56 , 5404.9386
Freeze: 5 / 415719 : 10/07/2019 07:27:32 , 6217.0498
Freeze: 6 / 514743 : 10/07/2019 10:28:14 , 6146.069
Freeze: 7 / 613767 : 10/07/2019 13:28:55 , 6116.9893
Freeze: 8 / 712788 : 10/07/2019 16:29:36 , 5733.3366
Freeze: 9 / 795257 : 10/07/2019 19:00:11 , 6036.7765
Freeze: 10 / 894281 : 10/07/2019 22:00:53 , 6034.6178
Freeze: 11 / 993305 : 10/08/2019 01:01:34 , 6167.3967
Freeze: 12 / 1092328 : 10/08/2019 04:02:15 , 6063.0455
Freeze: 13 / 1191350 : 10/08/2019 07:02:56 , 5467.5632
Freeze: 14 / 1273871 : 10/08/2019 09:33:32 , 6046.3592
Freeze: 15 / 1372895 : 10/08/2019 12:34:13 , 6040.4137
Freeze: 16 / 1471918 : 10/08/2019 15:34:54 , 5798.0925
Freeze: 17 / 1570943 : 10/08/2019 18:35:35 , 5374.3823

[rjbards]

@dustynz 

Wow! Amazing work. Yep, it could be just one "bad apple" of an application that upsets the apple cart. I hope others can get this confirmed too...

"Dell-S/W-free" and "freeze-free" here since 9/27/2019

[John-Jay]

@dustynz,

Excellent work!! Well done!

I think I'll give my XPS a few more days with all of the Dell Services disabled (jut in case I have a slightly different issue) & then, after that, I'll probably re-instate every thing EXCEPT Dell SupportAssist Remediation service!

Regards,

John-Jay

[DellCan]

Hi @dustynz 

Outstanding job, THANK YOU!

Please keep us in the loop with any further updates.

Given this status I will go back to my Dell PC and adjust it accordingly to further test.

[whoareyou_2009]

@dustynz 

Well I'm curious to see if everyone else is resolved by eliminating this service.  

If that ends up being true, then I have a different problem because I have no Dell services running on my machine.

[rjbards]

@whoareyou_2009 

Did you remove the Dell services yourself? Were they not added during a clean Windows 10 install? 

You mentioned a Windows upgrade in a prior post, was that an update to 1903 done recently? 

[dustynz]

To confirm, Stopping the "Dell SupportAssist Remediation" service this has stopped the freezing.

Disabled the service and then restarted the desktop. No other changes.

Ran last night for 7.5 hours, no freezes.

I am using "Insomnia" to stop my desktop going to sleep

Here is the powershell script to log the freezes. Basically samples every 100ms and logs freezes greater than 2000ms

$logFile = "c:\temp\freeze.log"
$DatePast = Get-Date
$FileLog = "======Restarted : $DatePast"
Add-content $Logfile -value $FileLog
$CountNo = 0
$FreezeNo = 0
while ($x = 1) {
$DateNow = Get-Date
$TimeNow = $DateNow.TimeOfDay
$DateDiff = $DateNow - $DatePast
$DatePast = $DateNow
$TimeDuration = $DateDiff.TotalMilliseconds
$CountNo = $CountNo + [int]1
if ([int]$TimeDuration -gt [int]2000)
{$FreezeNo = $FreezeNo + 1
$FileLog = "Freeze: $FreezeNo / $CountNo : $DateNow , $TimeDuration"
Add-content $Logfile -value $FileLog
write-host $FileLog
} else {
$FileLog = "Normal: $FreezeNo / $CountNo : $DateNow , $TimeDuration"
write-host $FileLog
}
start-sleep -milliseconds 100
}

[HanoverB]

reply to @John-Jay 

I think I'll give my XPS a few more days with all of the Dell Services disabled (jut in case I have a slightly different issue) & then, after that, I'll probably re-instate every thing EXCEPT Dell SupportAssist Remediation service!

Refer back to this to outline initially on the other thread I did back on 08/15/19 and again on this post

As far as driver and software packages, with a clean install and not using a Dell recovery disk:

Dell downloads off their site not necessary to install:
Dell Digital Delivery App
Dell Update- Support Assist Update Plug in
Dell Mobile Connect Driver
Intel Ready Mode Technology App
OTB Survey-Dell Customer Connect

Just do a clean install with recent W10 ISO that has most recent drivers and is a stable build.

Stop there!!!

Do not install:

Killer Control Center
Intel RST software
Any of the Dell Downloads from the website listed above

I would uninstall any of those Dell downloads from my machine if they are present.   

Doing this would have already solved those Dell software related freeze issues.

[whoareyou_2009]

@rjbards  "Did you remove the Dell services yourself? Were they not added during a clean Windows 10 install? You mentioned a Windows upgrade in a prior post, was that an update to 1903 done recently? "

1903 was upgraded.  The original Windows 10 (pro) install was clean. I had no problems until end of August. I removed the services myself.  They are gone.  

My issue also consistently logs

Log Name:      System
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-NDIS
Date:          10/8/2019 1:06:41 PM
Event ID:      10400
Description:
The network interface "Killer E2400 Gigabit Ethernet Controller" has begun resetting.  There will be a momentary disruption in network connectivity while the hardware resets. Reason: The network driver detected that its hardware has stopped responding to commands. This network interface has reset 1 time(s) since it was last initialized.

It's possible I have a hardware issue, but it doesn't seem like that's issue to me.  Anything is possible though.Guess I'll do what I should have done a while ago and disable ethernet to run on the wireless card.  

Would it be possible to run one more command (with admin privileges) for some info?

pnputil /enum-drivers 

It will simply list out all drivers on the machine.

You can redirect output to text file, or just cut and paste.

[whoareyou_2009]

By the way.  How do you add attachments to a post.  I see people have done this, but I don't see anywhere to do this.