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1937
Dell xps 9350 random freezes, related to video card, over heating or ram
Hello. So I recently got a dell xps 9350 and I have problems with constant freezes that even happen outside the operating system.
The screen either flickers and shows visual artefacts or it just completely freezes and I can't move anything aside from pushing the power button to forcefully shut it down.
I have not managed to find a pattern as to when this happens. It just works and then randomly starts acting up and from that point on wards I can't really make it work because it just starts freezing randomly.
It also freezes sometimes even when I run the dell diagnostics. And today, when it started acting up, I did run the diagnostics and after running it a few times and I couple of freezes, this showed up: https://imgur.com/a/OmofJcS (Memory errors detected. Limit exceeded). This only showed up after various runs, some of them finished successfully. (this one finished only after I took it off charger, not sure if it has anything to do with this)
I figure it might be the RAM but I have read a lot and it seems a lot of people have freezes with this model. Anyone found a fix or anything? Or might my laptop be faulty? Because if it's the RAM, I'm not sure if I can fix that ...
I'm thinking of putting memtest86 to test the ram and maybe take out the ssd and wifi card out to see what happens (I have read on some forum post that someone found out their wifi card at some point tries to take more power than the laptop can give and that makes it freeze)
BIOS is latest version as of today: 1.10.1.
Please help.
cartofu_tare
5 Posts
0
September 9th, 2019 02:00
Well, it seems like I fixed it. I'll post my findings here so that if anyone has this problem, they might find this helpful.
I've noticed something strange, I did make a memtest test without the ssd in and I did not have any error (while with the ssd it gave errors and the test would get corrupted really fast within 30 seconds of the test running). Also, going into linux live usb and stressing the **bleep** out of it (lots of youtube videos playing and such) did not result in any freeze. (freezes did happen in the linux live usb also, with the ssd in)
Then I opened the laptop and noticed that the ssd I had in my laptop (I bought it from someone, so the laptop wasn't new) is that the ssd was from Lenovo and I searched the internet to find out that there isn't a dell xps 9350 that actually comes with a lenovo ssd.
So running the memtest on all the 8gb of RAM did give me no errors without the ssd. Now I have bought a new Samsung evo 860 ssd (I wanted the SATA one) and the laptop is working perfectly. I stressed the **bleep** out of it (lots of youtube videos, playing a game in the meantime, trying to play Overwatch and Skyrim while the laptop was playing youtube things in the background) ... and it's working perfectly now.
So my guess as to what's happening is the fact that maybe the lenovo ssd was either faulty or not compatible. And since that lenovo one was on PCIe and was malfunctioning, I think it did affect the ram/cpu (I also got led error codes for ram faliure and cpu failure) and it would corrupt the ram and that's why the video card would show artefacts.
Anyway, hopefully this helps someone in the future in case it has the same issues.
cartofu_tare
5 Posts
0
September 3rd, 2019 02:00
Quick update.
So it seems the laptop tends to freeze even if I run linux from a live usb.
Also, something is very strange, I think it's related to overheating.
I've run memtest86+ and noticed something strange. So I did a couple of partial runs and this is what I found:
Run #1: Around 1 hour. OK
I let it work, everything went well but I stopped it at some point because I then realized that it only tests 4GB instead of 8GB which I have.
And I think this problem is due the fact that it seems that Linux only sees 4GB of RAM if I boot it in Legacy but sees 8GB if I boot it in UEFI. Sadly, the memtest86 version I had was not working on UEFI.
Anyway, no problem yet, so I entered windows, browsed the internet like 5 minutes to see why memtest sees only 4gb.
Run #2: around 30 minutes or so. OK
After I browsed, I entered memetest again and then let it run for like 20 or so minutes again.
Then I entered windows again, browsed again for like 5-10 minutes and then I went to memtest again.
Run #3: around 10-15 minutes. NOT OK
After like 10-15 minutes, it started showing up errors.
At this point, I stopped it, went back to windows to see if it boots up and if it freezes. In 5 minutes of browsing it didn't, so I went back to memtest.
Run #4: around 5 minutes. NOT OK
This time, around 5 minutes and then it started showing up errors... At this point I restarted one more time and went back to memtest.
Run #5: under 1 minute. NOT OK
This time it showed errors like couple seconds into the test. But what was strange was the fact that it started showing artefacts. First it was just random characters in random places, to the point it showed different parts of the screen in different colors. Each time I did something that would refresh the screen, this happened.
Now at this point I'm not sure. It would seem that the RAM is the issue? Or that the video card feeds the RAM with corrupted data? Or that it gets corrupted in the RAM or as time passes?
Going into windows I saw the same pattern. If I do something light, it doesn't make problems. When I start something that starts using the video card, it starts freezing randomly after some time (let's say 30 minutes +/-).
After the first freeze, the ones after that, usually take less and less time. 20 min, 15 min, 10 min and such. In the context of running youtube videos or things that use the video card.
I did also think that might be something with overheating or with the charger... Maybe the heat affects the video card and/or RAM at some point and the data gets corrupted?
Not sure ...
Any idea of what I can try to pinpoint this problem?
cartofu_tare
5 Posts
0
September 6th, 2019 04:00
Well, I know no one answered but I'm still going to write my findings, maybe it helps anyone if I fix it in the end.
So I have found that using the beta driver:Intel Beta driver suggested in thread Dell 9350 freezes, does indeed reduce the freezes (as I have used it a couple of days and it did not crash) but sadly it started doing again.
At this point it might be due to the actual drivers acting up, since I changed them a lot, so I'm going to reinstall the windows and make it as clean as possible regarding the drivers.
Also, I have noticed that last time it did freeze, I think it had to do with my wireless card (I have the Dell 1820A) and whenever I did start the wireless, it froze like 1 minute in but when I didn't, it would stay longer. Not sure if it's related, but I did get an Intel 8265 wireless card (as the one I have is acting pretty badly... might be faulty) ... I do suspect that this could also be the problem as I have read a lot on the subject and it seems to have a pretty poor design the motherboard for this model.
I'll update my findings.