New Dell XPS 8300 constantly Locking up.. help

It's been a while since I did an update, tried taking the computer into the

local computer technician (No, it is not one of those shady one's that are

leftover from the 90's), did not fix it, even though I took it in TWICE,

they apparently did not help in fixing it, i guess they eliminated

the possibility of it being a corrupt OS or a script glitch or something

like that, although I am still not sure. My warranty with dell is expired,

and void anyway since I had to open up the computer to install parts

(un-related to the problem). At this point, I am fulling willing to pay the

$70 for new RAM modules at the computer parts store and swapping out the

Nanya technologies RAM modules, as this is a supposed solution. If this

does not work, I will have t resort to buying a wireless keyboard and

mouse, something i'm not particularly happy with

because eventually I will be spending more on batteries than the actual

product.

I also have another solution. When you buy a monitor or a usb operated device, some have a bulky cylinder located near the end of the cable, the purpose of these is to block frequencies. My mouse, keyboard and printer DONT have this feature. Perhaps after a year they have been interrupting both management and performance of the keyboard and muse. Right now, I have the mouse in one of the back usb slots, and the keyboard in the front usb slot.  So far doing this has caused the mouse to lag less, before the mouse was lagging somewhat often and was quite a nuisance. can anyone give me any thought on this?

...void anyway since I had to open up the computer to install parts

That's not correct. You're free to install anything you want without voiding Dell's warranty. The only catch is that Dell may ask you to put the system back to its "factory state" before they provide warranty service and -obviously- they won't warranty any parts you've installed.

Mouse and keyboard should always be connected to rear USB ports on the PC.

Keep in mind that there are potentially a number of different reasons why your XPS 8300 is freezing and no one can guarantee replacing the Nanya RAM will solve your problem, but that did solve freezing problems on some XPS 8300 units.

You can buy 8 GB of RAM (2x 4GB) for $64 from crucial.com. A lot of users on this forum buy RAM from Crucial because they guarantee it works or they take it back for a full refund, as long as you purchased modules they recommended for a specific PC model.

Well I've had my dell pc for 15 months now, 3 months out of the warranty- and low and behold it starts freezing up and giving us a black screen. We tried everything in this monster forum, reinstalling drivers, uninstalling windows update, etc...nothing worked.

Finally we decided to simply reinstall windows. I put a NEW 1 tb hard drive into the pc, and removed the old one to save the files. I made it half way through the windows install when them monitor blanked out. I think we can safely say it's not a driver issue.

Seeing as this is out of warranty, can anyone confirm which part it is (IE, ram? video card?). Or, is it possible to extend dells warranty? I bought dell because  I thought it would be more reliable than a department store pc... I feel ripped off :( 

Just an update. We pulled the Radeon card (5700 series) as well, thinking to just replace it. Attached the monitor to the onboard video, installed windows 8, and now within 15 minutes we are getting the balck screen,. THIS time, however, windows 8 comes up and says we had a video_tdr_failure ....which google in dicates is a video hardware or driver issue (and again, the radeon card was removed, using onboard only, with FRESH windows 8!).

Motherboard issue?? Prior to the windows 8 install, we had disabled onboard video via the bios, and the pc ran fine for a year. I don't want to pay $200 to have dell re-support it, when it sounds like a major issue with this model.

@lifefanatic-  If you're using onboard video, did you install the correct (any) video driver?

Dell doesn't support Win 8 on the XPS 8300 so isn't providing the drivers. There is a Win 7 Sandy Bridge Graphics driver for on-board video in the XPS 8300 which  may or may not work with Win 8. You may need to look around on the net for a suitable Win 8 driver if the Win 7 driver doesn't work.

RoHe... to be clear, we were running windows 7 prior to yesterday, so it is NOT a driver issue. In case I didn't mention it- I upgraded, downgraded, uninstalled the video driver many times. Windows 8 was an attempt the solve the issue.

We are currently running windows 8 with 1 piece of ram (2gb) and the onboard video (which is working fine with the default 8 version.... at this point I'm not going to risk breaking it by changing this....one issue at a time!). We had to physically remove the Radeon card and unplug the cd-rom and spare hard drive, it's been running for 12 hours without issue...previously we would be lucky to get 15 minutes.

I suspect it's a power supply or motherboard issue at this point. Will try to swap the power supply and put the video card etc back in. This makes more sense than it being a driver issue. We have run this computer for 15 months without this issue and NOTHING changed in the last 2 or so months, so I'm crossing my fingers it's the power supply.

OK. It happened again yesterday while playing SIm City (though it seems to last all day for work, with just browsing/email).

Replaced the power supply with a high end modular corsair one...didn't fix it. Has anyone replaced the memory to see if that fixed it? I'm hesitant to spend even more money without knowing for sure what the issue is.

Is your RAM module Nanya or another vendor? Replacing Nanya memory modules with non-Nanya ones e.g. Crucial ones worked for many customers.

Is your RAM module Nanya or another vendor? Replacing Nanya memory modules with non-Nanya ones e.g. Crucial ones worked for many customers.

I suggested that in this thread over a week ago! :emotion-4:

They're the default ones- Samsung. I don't see nanya on the tag anywhere? I've found several threads on the video card having issues though, even in non dell systems. Did people have issues with a new card?

Please, please, please, everyone having this problem, BEFORE you spend your time, energy, and frustration on swapping motherboards, power supplies, DIMMs, replacing drivers, replacing graphics cards, reinstalling the operating system, please try the the following and report back whether or not this resolved the issue (it's worked for me for well over 2 years!)

1. Remove any PCI graphics cards presently installed and run with just the built-in video output to

complete steps 2 through 6 below.

2.  Download and install BIOS version 06 if your system is running anything older from support.dell.com:

www.dell.com/.../xps-8300

3. Reboot the system into system SETUP mode (press F2 during intial screen)

4. Navigate to the Graphics settings and DISABLE "Intel Multiple Display"

5. Navigate to the CPU configuration page and DISABLE "Report CPU C6"

6. Finish booting and determine if your system no longer hangs (pls report success of failure back to this forum)

7. Assuming your system no longer is hanging, shutdown, and reinstall your graphics card.  KEEP THOSE BIOS settings disabled from the steps above.

8.  Boot and determine if your system continues to be free of hanging (and again, pls report back to the forum your results.)

Kind regards,

classicax

I suggested that in this thread over a week ago! :emotion-4:

Sorry this is quite a long thread... I'm sure its been several times in earlier pages.

RoHe, I did see your mention of memory (I've read the whole thread) but I haven't come across nayone who actually changed it and confirmed it working. I did find several other threads of people having this issue with radeio 5000 series cards (dell pc or not) so I suspect it's the graphics card.

classicax- THANK YOU- I updated the BIOS, and disabled CPU C6....but I could not find a graphics section. I searched the whole bios, and did not find intel mutliple monitors. I suspect it's because my graphics card still hasn't been installed. I do run 3 monitors though, and it's my understanding that this would disable that?

I'll put the card back in, and see if I can get it to work. I appreciate the suggestion, and crossing my fingers that it works

RoHe, I did see your mention of memory (I've read the whole thread) but I haven't come across nayone who actually changed it and confirmed it working. I did find several other threads of people having this issue with radeio 5000 series cards (dell pc or not) so I suspect it's the graphics card. classicax- THANK YOU- I updated the BIOS, and disabled CPU C6....but I could not find a graphics section. I searched the whole bios, and did not find intel mutliple monitors. I suspect it's because my graphics card still hasn't been installed. I do run 3 monitors though, and it's my understanding that this would disable that? I'll put the card back in, and see if I can get it to work. I appreciate the suggestion, and crossing my fingers that it works

It was Dell's own conclusion that Nanya RAM was causing the XPS 8300 to freeze and swapped it for free, if the system was still under warranty. That seemed to have solved the problem for some users.

I do believe the Intel Multi Display option will be hidden in BIOS if you don't have an add-in video card installed. So you should look again after reinstalling the PCI-e card. You'll have to disconnect the monitor from VGA and connect it to the PCI-e card in order to enable the Multi Display setting if you plan to use onboard VGA output for one of your 3 monitors.

With regards to the graphics card mine froze a bit with my HD5770 card but it wasn't seated right. Ensure that the card is firmly pushed down. It will work if its slightly loose but cause freezing.