XPS

[austinramsay]

Having an issue with my new XPS 9370. Using the touchpad (haven't tried using a mouse with it at all), the mouse cursor sometimes stutters/freezes for a second then keeps going. Happens quite a lot actually. Sometimes it actually stutters multiple times in one swipe on the touchpad but other times it works fine..any ideas on what to do? I don't see any specific touchpad options in windows settings or anything either.. Thanks

[movax_]

This screams of a power-management related issue, from all the throttling / stepping along frequencies to cram this CPU into such a thin chassis and acheive the target battery life. It's insane that it's been poorly implemented to the point where my touchpad occasionally lags behind my finger or it takes 15-20s after resuming from sleep for the keyboard hot keys to work. Granted, there are more hardware configurations of a XPS 13 vs. a MacBook or Surface, but those guys seem to have figured it out.

The poor iGPU drivers don't help either; IMO they are better off spending effort perfecting the low-power iGPU use-case that most of us use instead of trying to cater to gamers that would be rather using an AMD or NVIDIA GPU anyways.

I'll try the disabling panel-refresh, but I'll try to get the Windows ETW framework setup to log exactly what's going on. Absolutely infuriating for a 8th generation Core i7 with 16GB of RAM to stutter running Microsoft Word or Google Chrome. My Dell R400 with a Pentium 2 nearly 20 years ago could run a simple word processor without stuttering.

[iSeptimus]

Same .All updated, wiped, rebuilt, every dell work around which basically just turns off Windows performance features. 

Sending back, unusable. Getting a Mac again.

[CalmDownMonkey]

Dell has released an LCD Firmware update that should address this issue:

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

However, it bricked my screen and an engineer had to replace it.

Dell Support tell me it's because the LCD Firmware isn't compatible with my exact screen. I am still waiting to hear when they will release a version that is compatible with my exact screen, but they're getting a bit confused with my question.

If anyone tries this can they see if it fixes the issue? Or if you also have a bricked screen? 

[raniramch9]

When is DELL Engineering going to provide an update on this? I am still experiencing mouse and cursor freezing on a laptop that costs over 1K, which is highly unacceptable. I have used this temporary solution, but need a response as to when I can expect this to be resolved ASAP, otherwise I will return this laptop.

[joola]

I had recently bought dell xps 13 9370 and same problem with the rest of you. I had disabled panel self refresh which seems to solved the problem temporarily. The thing is it seriously lowers the battery time. Is there any new solution? Driver update?-- that helps with the cursor problem long term and does not compromise battery life. 

[pherrman · Accepted solution]

I have good news for some of you hopefully! My solution!!!!

I had the same problem, mouse would get stuck and freeze and my keyboard would also get stuck and freeze and either skip words or make them like "thissssssss".

However this problem only occurred when programs were accessing the hard drive. For example when I tried searching for a file on my external hard drive, my mouse would freeze and my keyboard would freeze. WhenI plugged in my usb 3.0 to ethernet adapter my computer was almost unusable! Basically any peripheral usb devices that made the hard drive work, would freeze my mouse and keyboard.

Then I ran the dell diagnostic program on their support website for my computer (xps 15, 9570). During the random seek and funnel seek etc I would get the mouse lag and keyboard lag / skipped keys or extra keys. I also tried the intel graphics disable panel refresh and nothing happened. At this point was I basically **bleep**... I updated all drivers and went to bios 1.7.0... I also have windows 10 1809 October update. I also ran malewarebytes. 

I then called Dell tech support and they provided a solution that I was not sure would work. I went into bios setup (F2 on boot), selected performance, went to C-STATE CONTROL and unchecked it. I then restarted my computer and its working flawless now! its been about 8 hours and no problems yet, this is with restarts and stress tests. No problem yet. C-STATE apparently makes the CPU or usb ports sleep to save energy!!! Pretty dumb! So after disabling that I get no mouse lag or keyboard lag with my ethernet adapter and external hard drive! Smooth as can be so far!

I will keep you guys updated!

Thank you,

Pete

[pherrman]

Ok so I may have nearly cured the problem guys. Please note that I run my system with an egpu! I have disabled the dgpu (1050 ti) in device manager (massive lag / stutter reduction) and I went into the bios and enable boot support for thunder bolt devices. This causes the iGPU to code 43 but my egpu works very well on its own. I also have disabled intel speed step (I think helps abit) and disabled c states (massive lag / stutter reduction). I have also updated most of the drivers. I have also disabled panel refresh(no difference since I use external monitor and egpu) thing from the intel graphics control panel. I still sometimes get a stutter here and there like when writing this message I did get a 1-2 second freeze. Maybe I need to disable hardware acceleration in chrome again.... I also went into device manager and disabled alot of the power management options regarding usb hubs. Also I disabled pcie link power and put achi to lowest power. You can add these registry keys from tenforums. 

One thing I would like to see in next bios update is a way to force the igpu to stay active even when thunderbolt boot support is enabled. for some reason when windows boots with only egpu support, I get a lowered contrast on my screen. This can get fixed by turning the external monitor off and on again. However when thunderbolt boot support is disabled, the laptop screen boots first and then my external monitor comes online and the contrast is correct and vivid. So thats a minor fix I would like to see. 

Most importantly though, we have to fix these micro system hangs / stutters / freezes. I have read a few comments from some well informed people and they believe that what is happening is that the cpu is not allocating resources to the pci bus properly. Thus what happens is that the system runs out of resources for the mouse and keyboard and then freezes until it frees up resources again for them.  

Anyways guys I will keep at it and let you know the solution. Btw I also did registry fixes and a repair upgrade / install of windows. I may do the full factory reset soon if I don't figure out the solution. I also ran chkdsk and got 1 error about volume bit map? I then fixed that to with chkdsk /scan and chkdsk /spotfix

Good luck everyone!

Pete

[pherrman]

One more thing... I just downgrades bios from 1.7.0 to 1.5.0. I will report if lag / stutters issues are cured completely

[austinramsay]

For the record, the issue has disappeared with updates and following the posted solution. I have had no issues with it at all. Will be buying another XPS eventually when I feel the need to upgrade but for now this thing is perfect.

[MMP4]

Hello, 

So, what is the solun, downgrading the BIOS to 1.51 version?

Unchecking the option in BIOS doesn't solve the problem for me. 

Thank you!