XPS 8930, freezes for 3-5 seconds

>>To cut a long story short, I haven't had another 3-5 second Freeze

So, this improvement could be due to the rebuild, or it could be due to removing Support Assist.

GK

Like I said above, all I did was uninstall SupportAssist and SupportAssist Remediation Service from my XPS 8930 (no after-market upgrades, no mods) on Day 1 when it was already randomly freezing, and the freezes disappeared and never returned.

Thanks for the feedback.

When my system does the micro-freeze, I can hear a tiny grrr sound coming from the tower... sounds more electronic (yes, electronic) than mechanical.  The system disk is an SSD.

Otherwise, my build seems to be solid... after 30 days or so of break-in.

GK

In January 2020 I bought a Dell XPS 8930 and also experienced these annoying freezes lasting a few seconds and making a noise resembling the HD briefly spinning up. Looked for a remedy, and stumbled upon this forum.
I only opted for the least intrusive fix reported here - changing the startup type for Dell SupportAssist Remediation Service from Automatic (Delayed start) to Manual. I can confirm that these annoying hiccups are gone ever since. Why after at least 6 months of reporting this problem here, Dell hasn't done anything to fix it is beyond me.

* Press Windows key + R
* Type services.msc [press Enter or click OK]
* Find and open Dell SupportAssist Remediation
* Change Startup type: to Manual
* Click Apple- OK
* Restart the PC when done

This is a serious problem with XPS 8930. I'm on my second brand new computer and the mouse still freezes 4-5 seconds every 15 mins or so!

Dell needs to recall all these computers bc because someone messed up big time with the hardware.

Hello, after following these freeze forums for a while I thought I'd share what finally fixed my machine. I have 

XPS 8930
i7-8700k
32GB/RAM
NAViDIA GeForce GTX 1080
500GB SSD
2TB WD HDD
2TB Toshiba HDD

I fixed this issue by moving my two extra hard drives to externally powered enclosures. They were both stored inside the machine and plugged in via sata. One of the drives was from an old computer and was noticeably audible during spin up. I noticed that my computer would give me the 3 - 5 second freeze when ether of the two drives would spin back up after being put to sleep by the OS for inactivity. I am a web developer and I use this machine close to 8+ hours a day and I would experience the infamous freeze about once every hour. After I moved the drives to their own enclosures/power source I ceased to experience the freezes. I updated the bios and tired MANY of the solutions posted on these forums and none worked. I would put good money on the freezes being a power supply issue, the stock unit is only 460w, which is so low I'm amazed this machine runes as well as it does. I found it hard to test this, and quite frankly once I fixed it I had no urge to stick the drives back in to do any testing. I am currently about to replace the power supply unit due to fan noise (thats another issue, don't get me started). I hope this helps.

- Charley

@Charley2010 

Removing healthy drives is not the fix for the subject issue.  Your system does not appear to be under-powered by the OEM 460W PSU.

Here's a fix of sorts for the freeze issue:
https://www.dell.com/community/XPS-Desktops/XPS-8930-freezes-for-3-5-seconds/m-p/7502259/highlight/true#M46495

GK

I just wanted to chime in and let everyone know that removing Support Assist Remediation got rid of the freezes for me too. I used the powershell script provided in this thread to log freezes. They were occurring every 3 hours, almost exactly. After removing Support Assist Remediation, I ran the script for 13 hours without a single freeze.

All-

If you want to get down into the real nitty-gritty tech of the SupportAssist freeze issue, read this new thread with some excellent info...

Is it me or is this forum software totally wacked! How do you sort/find the latest post?

GK

@GKDesigns  - If you're logged in, left-click your avatar in upper right corner of the screen and select My Settings. On the My Settings screen click Preferences tab. Then click General, and on that screen select Sort topics by... Be sure to save the change before leaving that screen.

If you're not logged in, on any forum landing page, eg XPS Desktops, hover over the 3 vertical dots at right end of the "bread-crumb" line and select Sort by... at the bottom of the list of options.

Thanks!  I think I've got it sorting well enough.

GK

Can anyone help?

I am also experiencing a 3-5 second "freeze".  For me what "freezes" is a new window when it is trying to open (clicking on Settings, Update and Security is one example and opening EditPad Lite is another example).  Another thing that sometimes "freezes" is streaming video from Netflix or Xfinity or from a DVD.  

All of these happen very sporadically.  It might happen two or three times in a day.  It might be a week or more between occurrences.  

I've uninstalled Dell SupportAssist.  I've made the changes Ron suggested with USB root hubs and human interfaces by unchecking the option to allow the device to wake the computer and making sure USB Wake State Support is enabled in the BIOS.  I've updated to the latest BIOS and the latest chipset drivers.  

None of these has fixed the problem.

Any ideas what else I might try?  My PC is an out of the box 8930 with the i7 8700 and 64 GB memory.

Thanks,
Bill

---

@bilhen wrote:

Can anyone help?

I am also experiencing a 3-5 second "freeze".  For me what "freezes" is a new window when it is trying to open (clicking on Settings, Update and Security is one example and opening EditPad Lite is another example).  Another thing that sometimes "freezes" is streaming video from Netflix or Xfinity or from a DVD.  

All of these happen very sporadically.  It might happen two or three times in a day.  It might be a week or more between occurrences.  

I've uninstalled Dell SupportAssist.  I've made the changes Ron suggested with USB root hubs and human interfaces by unchecking the option to allow the device to wake the computer and making sure USB Wake State Support is enabled in the BIOS.  I've updated to the latest BIOS and the latest chipset drivers.  

None of these has fixed the problem.

Any ideas what else I might try?  My PC is an out of the box 8930 with the i7 8700 and 64 GB memory.

Thanks,
Bill

---

That actually sounds like a different issue...

And hang on... I never told you to uncheck a box "to allow the device to wake..." I said to to uncheck the box to "Allow PC to turn off...". That's a big difference!

Did you uninstall SupportAssist Remediation Service and what about Dell Update?
Go to Start>Run>services.msc
Make sure all those Dell services are disabled, if they're still on that list.

Have you looked at your active Power plan's settings and disabled these?
Hibernation
Hybrid Sleep
USB Selective Suspend
PCI Express Link State Power Management

What other unnecessary "stuff" is running in the background?