XPS 15-9570, mouse/keyboard lag, repeating keys

@robert p Yep same as for the others on this thread it seems disabling the c-states hides the problem. I'm not sure yet what the impact of that will be on battery life.

It would seem under low load situations, several/all? of the CPU cores are being put into lower sleep states, leaving the system unable to respond in a timely way to real-time demands - eg keystrokes on the USB bus (and Bluetooth given what @IvanBernatovic noticed). 

I guess the question becomes - are there similar complaints for all the other modern laptops with CPUs supporting these sleep states or what has dell done differently to be more affected by this and can it be fixed under firmware or driver update?

Hi michael_wbs,

Thanks for your reply.  Yes, if it becomes prevalent that this is an issue, I'm sure the development team will provide a solution with either a driver or firmware update.  Just keep checking the BIOS updates for your computer to see if they address your issue.

@robert pThanks, can you confirm whether or not the development team are actively looking at this?
Thanks,
LJ

Links to similar issues:

https://www.dell.com/community/Precision-Mobile-Workstations/Precision-5530-and-TB16-dock-mouse-and-keyboard-freeze/td-p/6187628
https://www.dell.com/community/Latitude/5591-USB-dock-keys-repeated-mouse-lags-w-BIOS-C-states/td-p/7248030
http://www.ids-imaging.com/frontend/files/AN_AB.1.0024_USB-BandwidthCurrentCPUs.pdf

Yep, I've also previously (via reddit) sent DELL support this list of similar issues:

https://www.dell.com/community/Latitude/5591-USB-dock-keys-repeated-mouse-lags-w-BIOS-C-states/td-p/7248030
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1977309-repeating-keystrokes-dell-setup
https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/Dell-XPS-15-9570-mouse-keyboard-lag-and-repeating-keys/m-p/723570
https://www.dell.com/community/Latitude/Thunderbolt-TB16-Latitude-5591-USB-lag-and-freeze/td-p/61978
https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/Mouse-cursor-lagging-and-stuttering-XPS-9370/td-p/5739882/
https://www.dell.com/community/Latitude/Dell-Latitude-7490-Bios-1-8-0-causes-USB-problems/m-p/719426 
ttps://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-General-Read-Only/Mouse-keyboard-problems-with-latest-USB-drivers-on-TB16-and-5510/td-p/5085638/page/2
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/9my2yh/xps_15_9570_external_keyboard_issues_w_tb16_or/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/5qydpb/keyboard_repeat_issues_wdell_xps_15_9560/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/a3sm94/does_anyone_else_have_tremendous_problems_with/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/9c7yao/very_strange_keyboard_tb16_issue_with_xps_9575/

There's an awful lot of smoke here not to be any fire

Does anyone know a way of turning off selected c-states only? I see the overclockers get down to that level but not sure if that's through options available in their bios where we dont have that sort of granularity or if there's some tools available to do it. 

These are also interesting reads:

I can't replicate the issue if I run Windows in safe mode. I tried clean boot mode (basically disabled all 3rd party services) and I managed to reproduce the issue. I have a question for all of you that are experiencing this.

Did you try to install fresh Windows to fix this or you are running Dell's preinstalled Windows image?

If you apply this Dell USB-C patch to the system, does that help? --> https://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER03471411M/13/Dell_Dock_USB_TYPE-C_PATCH_2K0JJ_A00_SETUP_ZPE.exe  

This .EXE is a batch file that makes a small registry change for the power settings of the Intel Management Engine (Intel ME). 

Text of the batch file that the executable runs is (you can of course extract it yourself to verify):

"@echo off
for /f "tokens=4-5 delims=. " %%i in ('ver') do set VERSION=%%i.%%j

rem Win10 version: 10.0
rem Win8.1 version: 6.3
rem Win8 version: 6.2
if "%version%" == "10.0" goto CHECK_X64
if "%version%" == "6.3" goto CHECK_X64
if "%version%" == "6.2" goto CHECK_X64
goto NO_NEED_PATCH

:CHECK_X64
if not defined ProgramFiles(x86) goto NO_NEED_PATCH

:DISABLE_ME_PM
reg add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MEIx64\Parameters\ /v PG_DISABLED /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
@echo Please reboot your system to make the patch take effect.
pause
goto END

rem Not Supported OS
:NO_NEED_PATCH
@echo This OS doesn't require this patch.
@echo Press the space key to exit.
pause
goto END

:END"

@rboerner  Thank you very much, it seems that this works as I cannot reproduce the issue at all. Can you please elaborate what are the consequences of this (other than fixing my issue)? Quick research suggests that this disables so-called "Power Gating" which should probably slightly reduce battery life (I'm okay with that to a certain extent).

USB-C patch did not work for me, but disabling C states did. It's a shame that there is no real fix for this.... Why? ...