XPS

[swehjo]

As mentioned in another question here in the forum, "Missing drivers after Win 11 install", I made a clear re-install of Windows to try to get rid of an annoying issue.

I had a clean W10 install with all the Dell drivers installed. Based on Dell recommendations I replaced my two old Dell monitors with a pair of Dell U2723QE in May -22. That didn't really work out well since the 9570 couldn't manage to drive two monitors on that resolution (3840x2160). Had many and long support calls which ended with that Dell Support were going to come back to me with a resolution. They never did. In the meantime I managed the situation by driving one screen via USB C (which also feeds power and Ethernet) and the other one via HDMI. I had to set the refresh rate of the HDMI monitor to 30Hz otherwise the screen would flicker. That wasn't an issue since I work with Office stuff and photos.

I bought a tool to calibrate the colors which worked for some time but suddenly, sometime after summer, the monitors started to differ from the 9570. The tow monitors had much warmer colors than the 9570. Recalibrated and so forth. Didn't work. Then I discovered that Display settings suddenly showed 3 monitors, one disconnected. If this extra screen occured before or after having used Intel Update to update Graphics Command Center from the old Dell version a few weeks ago I dare not to say.

Then came the Windows 11 but that update didn't help. On the contrary I got other issues with the PC, stoped to react, died and so forth. Well, the original Windows install was close to 2 years old so during this week I made a clean re-install of Win 11 on a reformatted HD and had Dell update/SupportAssist to complement that. Still 3 monitors but PC worked well.

Today the USB C monitor suddenly turned black and in Display settings I still had 3 monitors, i.e. not the correct 2, but now with 2 monitors disconnected/disabled. Have tried to restart monitors and PC several times with no luck.

So, what's going on here and how to resolve it? Lower the resolution is not the correct answer since then I have no use of these two, rather expensive, monitors. And it worked well enough for several months. Something else is the culprit, not with the screen but with the PC. Another, slightly newer client PC i tested, can drive both of them at this resolution so it's definitely nothing wrong with the monitors.

[swehjo · Accepted solution]

Sorry for a long silence, I've been “enjoying” myself with testing. Instead comes a long text with how I came to what seems to be a perfectly stable environment.

Googling my errors I’ve found out that I’m definitely not alone with these BSODs connected to “Driver_power_state_failure”, especially connected to the Adobe Photoshop family of products. Obviously Windows requires a lot more of your PC and so does the latest updates of the Photoshop products. There are numerous more or less odd and homemade “solutions” that work for some, and not for others. I tend not to go for them since they often create even more problems and are difficult to [remember an] revert. Instead, I stick to standard solutions. This worked this time as well.

None of these settings were necessary with Windows 10 and/or the earlier versions of the Adobe products.

1. In Settings-System-Display-Graphics I set Adobe Bridge, Photoshop, Lightroom and Premiere Rush to “High performance”, that is that they are to run on the Nvidia Geforce GPU. With “Let Windows decide (Power saving)” the Nvidia GPU was not used resulting in sluggish and erratic behavior of the Adobe products
2. In Intel Graphics Command Center and - I set System-Power-Power Efficiency to 1, i.e lowest power efficiency but highest graphics quality
3. This gave some stability to Photoshop but instead gave me problems in Bridge, "The GPU device instance has been suspended. Use GetDeviceRemovedReason to determine the appropriate action.". Run ”sfc /scannow” which fixed some issues. Don’t know what fix specifically fixed it since I’m not the person to interpret that log.
4. New error message turned up, "Not enough memory resources are available to complete this operation." in Bridge and GPU errors i Photoshop. I realized that my “system managed” virtual memory was exhausted. Via System-About-Advanced system settings-Performance settings-Advanced I tested a couple of settings and ended up with the following which successfully got rid of any memory issues:
   Initial size: 3072
   Maximum: 12288
5. At this stage I turned to the drivers and realized I didn’t have the latest generic Intel driver but Dell’s latest driver. Replaced that and also went for Nvidias Studio driver (the default installation had given me the game driver…).
6. Now I instead got "The graphics processor has encountered an unrecoverable error. Due to a run-time error, GPU acceleration has been disabled for the reminder of the session" or that one of the Adobe products just quit. Tested different GPU settings in the products but this helped for some time or gave me a very sluggish video performance while editing. After a  few days testing I got the feeling that the errors increased the longer I worked with the PC. Heat problems? Realized that the fan had been very silent compared to how it run before the whole upgrade process.
7. Installed HWMonitor and realized the Intel Core i7 8750H often run very high, 85-95C and the Nvidia GPU up to 80C. Did a short test, got a GPU error in Photoshop and could verify that the monitoring of the Nvidia had frozen and I didn’t get a temperature reading on it via Task Manager Performance. Restarted the PC and since then I have had no issues (2 days). The funny thing is that I didn’t do any further changes to any setting but running HWMonitor in the background suddenly “turned on” my fans and I got absolutely no more issues.
8. By placing the PC on a stand, I facilitated the cooling and the temperatures dropped 10-20C. Have run hard testing, i.e. open many large RAW files and process them at the same time, without any problems whatsoever.

It can also be noted that before I started with HWMonitor I couldn't let the laptop go into sleep mode. That resulted in a rebooted PC when I woke it up again. That behaviour seems also to have disappeared. 

So, in short, make sure you have all the latest drivers, increase memory, give the GPU full power and make sure to cool the computer. New Windows and Adobe products seem to need it. Hopefully this will be a stable solution, if not I’ll post here on the forum.

Running the PC on the Dell U2723QE's USB 90W power supply instead of the correct 130W doesn't seem to be an issue. 

[swehjo]

And no, I haven't had time to see what happens if I go back to work without HWMonitor. Now, when everything seems to work I need to get some work done

[swehjo]

Made one test of running Bridge and Photoshop with the PC on the stand (i.e. free airflow) but not with HWMonitor running. Nvidia soon gave up, even without working in Photoshop, only open two RAW-files. I had to restart the PC to be able to continue my work. 

I noted that the fan didn't work as hard as it does with HWMonitor. I really can't understand what HWMonitor is doing, which the PC cannot do without it running.... 

[d5123101]

So does the issue persist? If not please mark your reply as the solution

[swehjo]

I'll mark it as solution even though it's not the complete solution. Running HWMonitor to avoid overheating (?)/BSOD/appication or driver crashes/etc is not a solution, it's a work around. By mistake I've forgotten to start HWMonitor a few times and every time I run into problems with the Adobe Photoshop products. Do I start a new thread regarding that? In such a case, what forum?

[d5123101]

Can you send a link to the HWMonitor program you are using? The system should automatically be able to monitor its fans, so you should not need to use a third party software to override.

[swehjo]

Fully agree with you. It is very odd and I can't really see the connection between a tool that only measures the temp and the regulation of the fans. And, Task Manager's Performance Tab shows the GPU temp of the Nvidia GPU, with or without, HWMonitor (https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html). HWMonitor does however show a few other processor temperatures  as well as other statistics. I found it by googling and it was described as good. No more effort or reason I chose that one. Nevertheless, with the tool on the PC works as it should, without not.....

The root could  c o u l d  be that I've done a clean Win 11 install without installing the Dell drivers (except that I tried Dell's Intel video driver which I had to replace as mentioned above). So maybe I'm missing a driver necessary for the temperature regulation but I thought that Win  update and the Intel Update I'm using should take care of that.  

[d5123101]

Yeah, if you're missing drivers that could be an issue. Does device manager should any obvious ones missing, you could also use Dell tools to install missing drivers. In the BIOS, there also could be fan options. On my 9320 there are four modes "Optimized, Ultra Performance, Cool, Quiet" which you also can adjust while in Windows.

[swehjo]

Device Manager is "green" and under System devices I can also find "Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework Generic Participant", its "Manager" and "Processor Participant". Neither Windows', Dell's, nor Intel's automatic update processes show any missing driver. I'll have a look at the BIOS settings even though I doubt that would be an issue, have never had to adjust anything there before. I don't think I've seen any Windows setting for the fans, only for the video which I have set to best performance as written above.

[swehjo]

Regarding "Task Manager's Performance Tab shows the GPU temp of the Nvidia GPU" which I wrote in one of my comments above. Yes, Task manager shows the Nvidia GPU temp but just having Task manager open didn't, and doesn't, help. Only HWMonitor does. If there are other tools, similar to HWMonitor, that would have the same positive effect on the fan and cooling behaviour I don't know. Haven't, and won't, spend time on testing that. I hope that Dell will come up with a real solution.

It can also be noted that my 9570, before the clean Win 11 install, was one of those which had its fan starting to "pump" from time to time when it was idling. Seen a lot of postings around that on the net. Pressing a button, waking it up, stopped the pumping. If I do a HW test nothing comes up.