XPS 17 - issues, issues and issues

Question

Hardware: Dell XPS 17 laptop, everything specced to max (or best hardware available from options)

Hello,

I'm getting frustrated with both my Dell XPS 17 and the Dell Support team. As of now, I strongly discourage anyone to buy this laptop. Went over to Dell (from a Surface Book) for a more powerful laptop, but it has come with numerous problems. And the Dell support? Well, they are utterly useless, to be honest. I want a replacement and I'm hanging in this never-ending support cycle that won't accept that the laptop is faulty.

For every problem I encounter, a quick search on the internet results in countless others with the same problems, and Dell apparently seems to hear everything for the first time.

Excuse my little rent. Coming from a near issueless Surface Book to this 4000 dollar bag of problems is frustrating.

The problems I experience are:

The laptop discharges when under load. I have their 'latest' 130 wat power brick;
My left speaker stops working randomly;
Multiple times my Nvidia RTX 2060 was completely missing. Not visible in the Display setting, device manager or even in the BIOS (so my laptop was only running on the Intel GUI);
There are memory issues. I randomly get blue screens of death, stating it was related to my memory;
Laptop not getting out of sleep. Fans spinning intensively, and the laptop is pretty warm to the touch. When the laptop went into sleep, noting 'heavy' was running. I have to reset the laptop by holding the power button for 10-20 seconds.

The Dell diagnostics are executed countless times, the quick- and the long tests. No issues found. Reliability Monitor from Windows does show critical errors, relating it to hardware problems.

The Dell Support team. I have talked (via Whatsapp) to multiple 'one of the managers of Dell' (their exact words). My request for a replacement is ignored every time. They suggest running the diagnostics each and every time. When I send them a screen print of the diagnostic result, they say that it looks good. And if I can confirm if the issue is resolved. Like what? I explain one of the issues above. They ask to run the diagnostics and share the result. After that they say: "ah, everything looks good. We done now?"

Also, one of their suggestions to battery drain is to throttle my video card performance... Why did I pay for that RTX 2060 again?

I hope that by sharing it publically here, my issues finally get addressed. But I would strongly not advise anyone to buy this laptop... At least not fully specced.

I wanted to share dozens of examples of other people with the exact same problems. But Dell marks my post as 'spam'... Just search for one of the issues mentioned and you will see it's a common problem for the XPS 17.

justin-12345 · Answer

Speak of the ..evil. I just got a BSOD, yet again. And my video card is completely gone again.

YannickBTRNS · Answer

the 3060 consumes 70w at peak, the 11800H can go as high as 65w, but likely will be around 20-45w unless you're doing artificial stress testing, the 4k panel consumes 15w, the fans 7w, the SSD and RAM probably another 5-10w.

Add that all up and you get 130-150w, which exceeds the chargers ability, hence the battery draw.

justin-12345 · Answer

How could that have ever been a good idea

Raoul-Volfoni · Answer

pour ma part c’est exactement ca : 'Il y a des problèmes de mémoire. J'obtiens au hasard des écrans bleus de la mort, indiquant que cela était lié à ma mémoire' 'L'ordinateur portable ne sort pas du sommeil. Lorsque l'ordinateur portable s'est mis en veille, notant « lourd » était en cours d'exécution. Je dois réinitialiser l'ordinateur portable en maintenant le bouton d'alimentation enfoncé pendant 10 à 20 secondes' Avec en plus, de temps en temps, un copier-coller (représentant quelques ko) qui rame. Etonnant, pour un core i9 avec 64 de ram !!! A noter : je n'ai pas voulu m'énerver à perdre un temps dingue avec les 'services' DELL (cf. post de Justin) Toutefois, j'invite DELL à me contacter pour résoudre ces problèmes à 4500€ via un échange standard. Dès lors, les prochains équipements de mon entreprise pourraient être renouvelés avec leur produits...

rageking2 · Answer

wow i have the exact same problem  did you get this solved?

justin-12345 · Answer

Hello rageking,

Yes. It took allot of effort and dedication. But I finally got it fixed. A Dell mechanic came to my home and replaced: the whole motherboard, both ram modules, cpu, gpu, powerunit and the keyboard unit, which is basically the whole laptop besides the aluminium case and screen.

Try to collect the crash dump from windows. Sent that to the support team. The file should be called

MEMORY.DMP

justin-12345 · Answer

Oh and the battery drain, well that’s just a huge design flaw. They can’t fix that

gtcdxb · Answer

Hi everyone,

here is another Dell XPS story, you might be interested to hear, All my email correspondence with the Dell Support were also copied the the Dell Board of Directors which of course never ever replied to me!

I bought the Dell XPS 17 9720 in April 2023 in Houston with Micro Systems and have spent 2.730 $ for the package including a J5 Docking station, an extra 2 TB SSD stick and a Mouse.

The unit were than imported to the Philippines where i currently live, BTW, i am a MME 75 years old computer literate from the times even before the DOS systems, i am doing all my Drawing on AutoCad and i am programming CNC Machine tools up to 5 Axis... please consider myself as knowledgable....

In May 23 I travelled to Singapore in order to apply for another Patent of my design, we are talking connectivity of Precast Building Systems.

The XPS failed on that Trip, I could not open my -C- Drive, hence my drawing could not presented to the Patent Attorneys, fortunately, i had printed copies with me, so the trip was not a complete waste of Money!

Back in the Philippines, i demanded the replacement of the 2 month old useless Dust Catcher on my Desk, which was denied by the Dell Support service since the Dell International warrany would not cover the replacement but the repair.

Defective parts were supposed to be replaced, allmost 3 weeks later, the excelent Dell repair technician arrived on his private scooter with a backpack full of parts, needless to say, most of the the wrong parts, for instance a SSD HDD stick came with a pre installed Windows 10 Home edition, my unit was having Win 11 Professional running. The Motherboard was not availlable, the repair attempt failed.

Next repair attempt, 2 weeks later had the Motherboard and my unit was supposed to run now without issues.... some might think......

Well, wrong thinking, since than and until now March 24 3 motherboards, 2 SSD Sticks, Keyboard and trackpads 130 watts chargers and plenty of other parts were exchanged, a total of 5 repair attempts did not enable me to to have a smooth running XPS on my desk! The latest issue yesterday was the boot up message to use the original charger, since my charger seem to be of low output. Needless to mention that i only have this 130 Watt Dell charger brick which had been exchanged 3 times as well....

Changing the USB port from #1 to # 4 finally resolved this issue, i could at least use the unit again with a full Battery..... Of cours, the Dell support Assist software is telling me to solve hardware issues, my 2nd SSD Drive is been declared faulty, according to the Crucial Test Software, all my SSD's are of "GOOD HEALTH"....

I am able to access my data on this drive without any issues, can copy and paste on it, but as per Mr. Dell, its deffective.... how come???

Any how, to cut a long story short, finally the Dell Support people in Kuala Lumpur finally agread to replace my unit now.... after 7 month of griev anger and trouble..... HOW Wonderful!!! BTW, the Dell Support People are realy helpful, i feel quite sorry for them dealing with such terrible quality Hardware.....

I am now waiting for the replacement to hapen, the support people confirmed, but i am not aware of the procedures ahead.....

Well, lets hope for the best, but expect the worst!

XPS

XPS 17 - issues, issues and issues

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