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andrew.cocke
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February 24th, 2016 13:00
Precision 5510 crashing problems
I've had VERY bad luck with Dell laptops. Last fall I ordered the new Dell XPS 15 and it arrived with bad motherboard and harddrive, both of which were replaced and it still didn't work. So we then returned the order and purchased instead the newly released Precision 5510. The problems weren't so immediately apparent, but soon it became clear that the computer would crash five or six times over the course of an 8 hour workday. The crashes may be related to Outlook and/or Explorer, but it would frequently crash when the computer was completely idle. We didn't return the computer because we thought the problem might be driver related, but after updating all the drivers, we moved onto potential conflicts with other software and hardware. We finally decided to have it replaced, but the replacement had EXACTLY the same problem. This is an awesome computer, and I haven't been able to find any reports of similar problems, but when we had the same problems with an identical machine, I didn't know what to think. I'll be returning this machine soon, but I wanted there to be a record of my problems in case others are encountering similar problems.
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andrew.cocke
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Posted March 22nd, 2016 15:00
After an unproductive visit from a Dell on-site support tech who replaced the hard drive (Solid state) to no effect. I finally demanded that Dell step up and take some responsibility for the fixing the problem. They offered to take the laptop back for factory support. They replaced some unspecified piece of hardware, reloaded Windows (incidentally they loaded windows 7 instead of 10 which it initially came with), tested the machine and sent it back. I haven't had any problems since, even after we did an inplace upgrade to windows 10.
In short, I still don't know if it was drivers or bad hardware, but I can say this. When the first computer was a dud, we bought a second machine with identical specs and had exactly the same problem. The day after we finally received the working machine back from Dell, the second machine stopped booting altogether. We sent it back. Now that it finally works, I love the Precision 5510 now, but Dell support has been abysmal.
andrew.cocke
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Posted March 23rd, 2016 14:00
There is a little more to my story. I started by purchasing the new, similarly spec'ed XPS15 which is the same form factor as the Precision 5510. Dell replace the mother board once and the hard drive twice and we finally returned that machined. It never did work. Then we tried the 5510 and after maybe two months of trouble shooting, trying to figure out if it was some software conflict, or our system image. Dell finally came out and replaced the hard drive. Nothing. In the meantime, we actually ordered a second Dimension and had exactly the same problem. We were about to have a tech come out and replace hard drive when the computer completely stopped booting and wouldn't recognize the hard drive at all. So, between three computers we had at least five hard drives and four mother boards that were at least suspect. I think there may be production problems at Dell. Don't wait, escalate!
andrew.cocke
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Posted June 10th, 2016 08:00
Apologies for not following up sooner. After multiple support techs, I finally shipped the computer to dell where they did some diagnostics and reinstalled the OS (Windows 7). Dell mentioned in the invoice, "replaced system hardware" which is vague enough that is could be anything. Totally unhelpful and given our track record with these machines, Our first mistake probably was purchasing a brand new model. Maybe there were production problems, sourcing problems, maybe the machines hadn't been tested enough. Whatever the case, I would hope that Dell eventually irons out these bugs, but until I understand what the bugs were, I we will not be ordering any more until we have a better understanding about what kept failing.
I think our second mistake was using our corporate image instead of Dell's. When Dell replaced the aforementioned "system hardware" and reimaged the machine, it worked fine. Even after upgrading to Windows 10. It's a great computer, but every little glitch, the occasional blue screen keeps me wondering. That being said, its very fast and mostly reliable. I test a lot of software and I need a computer that is a known quantity so that I can be reasonably assured that any bug I'm encountering is not caused by my computer.
andrew.cocke
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Posted September 8th, 2016 06:00
Are you using the Dell image? When we loaded the Dell OEM OS, all the driver problems were fixed.
Andrew, I'm having the same issue with the two PW5510 I purchased in December. I have reloaded the system completely twice and the issue still happens. Random blue screens, nothing gets written to the event log making it hard to troubleshoot. Dell is suggesting that I send the system in for repaired but I'm not convinced it's a hardware issues since both of the systems I have purchased have similar issues.
It seems the random crashing happens most often when the system is connected to the network using the Thunderbolt port. It will run fine if it's off the network or using wireless.If you come up with a solution please let me know.I have an awesome system that I can't use because of the stability issues.
I'm having the same problem with my 5510. I've tried both dell and Microsoft installs of Windows 10, with and without the Dell drivers. Bluescreens with no minidumps or event logs. Happens more often with the thunderbolt USB (about 6x in a 9 hour period) vs on wireless (once in a 9 hour period). I plan to try downgrading to Windows 7 and seeing if I have the same issue. Has anyone had this issue and actually managed to get a resolution?
kangaroo2002
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Posted March 23rd, 2016 08:00
This is very interesting.
My Precision 5510 came with Ubuntu. It was hanging. I would be typing a document in say, LibreOffice, and the screen would just suddenly go black, and that was it.
I installed Fedora 23 Linux, and it seemed like it was doing much better, but it turns out the problem was still happening there.
I thought that the problem was related specifically to Linux since Skylake support there is rather new. I installed Windows 10 pro, and all the various dell driver updates. The machine hung several times in Windows yesterday. At one point, it hung, I rebooted, opened up Firefox, went back to a web page I was editing, and it hung again... but after shutting down and coming back up again, it didn't hang again. Since my machine didn't come with Windows 10, of course I can't get Dell support for that... and I definitely am not ready to go back to the Dell-installed Ubuntu either.
The fact that the problem is Linux/Windows, it seems more hardware related, or BIOS, or something along those lines.. but who knows.. I will continue experimenting a bit more before having Dell come out. How long has it been since you've had your machine back that the problem did not occur again?
Fortunately, I found something on TechNet:
That seemed to address the issue. I downloaded the Samsung NVMe drivers ssd.samsungsemi.com/.../update15.do;as suggested by TechNet. The machine has not suffered a BSOD in 23 hours now, which is a new record. Dell wanted to replace my motherboard and RAM, but quite frankly I don't want to touch it until I'm caught back up on work. So I'd attempt to apply the Samsung NVMe driver before anything. Hopefully Microsoft will roll it up into their list of drivers and we can stop the plague of BSODs.
As a caveat, it seems some people have had problems rebooting after installing the driver. I've rebooted twice with no issues, but don't want to push my luck atm.
kangaroo2002
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Posted March 24th, 2016 13:00
I actually installed that driver (in addition to installing upgraded NVIDIA driver, upgraded Intel 530 graphics driver, etc. -- anything I could update so that I'd be running the latest version) and I still had the crash one time yesterday. Now, I don't have the machine with me right now, but one thing that I found puzzling was that when I opened up "hard disk" in Device Manager, and went to the NVMe disk, and looked at the details for the driver, it still listed it as the "Microsoft" driver... so I thought that the driver install didn't work! I tried to reinstall it, and it failed because it was in use.. so it seems like it did work... but as I said, I had the crash one time... Just curious if you see anywhere in Device Manager that it's specifically using the Samsung NVMe driver, and where... Also, it would be great if you could report back what happens after a day or two.. Thanks! :)

andrew.cocke
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Posted February 29th, 2016 12:00
I've noticed the problems occur much more frequently when I'm running Explorer and Outlook, so my feeling is that it is related to networking somehow, but occasionally I'll get a crash even when I'm not using the network, (although, it is entirely possible that an open program is pinging a license server).
I'm curious are you using the OEM system install, or a system image developed for other computers in your network. We used a generic image and wiped away the OEM image, so I'm in the process of putting that image back on the machine and seeing if that helps.
I will definitely keep you posted of any results.
Andrew