Dell XPS 15 9530 will not wake after sleeping

After receiving a link to track the support status, I saw that the scheduled repair was changed to Friday, February 6th. I called DELL technical support to ask for the reason because I have a Next Business Day warranty and Friday is four days...

The technical support told me that the missing parts (mainboard) are not available. The date was even shifted to Friday, February 13th, as the mainboards will only arrive in Europe next Wednesday (February 11th), plus some days to be in Switzerland...

I was told that I have three options: repair (in about two weeks), money back (also takes a few weeks) or replacement (which again takes a few weeks). After a few hours of pondering I decided to take the repair option. If the replacement of the mainboard doesn't fix the problem, I will be able to choose from the three options again (within first 30 days). I again suggested to have that power connection part replaced, but was told that other customers with my problem had the mainboard replaced and that was enough, so therefore that is what will be done.

I'll let you know about the success when the exchange was done.

I really hope that we can expand this thread to include everyone's XPS 9530 issues concerning the sleep function.  Dell needs to monitor this and start working for their customers.

From what I've read it appears that those in the USA have much easier and quicker response with Dell support then international users.

I originally purchased my system in November, had to re-install the OS and had a crazy time trying to validate the Windows license, apparently even though i was installing it from the DVD that Dell provided, it did not authenticate with my motherboard.  Spent some time with 2 techs at my house and finally they shipped me a replacement after complaining for hours to them.

The new issue that I had was with the sleep function, it drove me nuts for 2 weeks trying to figure it out. Finally last Thursday i called up Dell and I simply told them i want a new system because I have spent the last 2-3 months with a $2000 piece of sh!t that only keeps going from one failure to another.  FedEx is scheduled to arrive today - I hope this laptop goes to sleep and wakes up as it should.  If it doesn't do that - Dell will hear about it.

Replacing the motherboard could be enough, however if it worked when you got the laptop it's likely something caused the motherboard to break.

2 weeks!? I hear that Swizerland have similar laws to Norway, (outside of EU,) did you buy the computer as a private customer or business?

If the first is the case it is not acceptable for you to wait 2 weeks without support. In Norway you get to test a product in 2 weeks from pickup to decide if you are satisfied. If not you should be able to return it, no questions asked.

But if you are waiting for support those two weeks you would loose your chance to regret your purchase.

Depending on what you want to use the computer for, I think you should consider the fact that 5th gen Intel cpus are starting to surface, albeit not 4 cores yet. There are also laptops with 900 series gpus (two versions up from our 700)

I'm happy with mine, but I'm intending to use it for programming, so the gpu was not a deal breaker.

I need several cores to test if multithreading works in my software, so 4 cores over 2 in the new 13" which was really really tempting for me.

Thanks for your response.

I did use the notebook for 12 days before it broke and I would be satisfied with it - when it does not break anymore. But you are right, the two weeks reduce my 30 days of testing (I have 30 days here) by half.

I also use it for programming so I want to stay with 4 cores (also looked at the new xps 13 yesterday). I don't want to wait (another year?) for the 5th generation with four cores.

To my surprise, yestarday (2 days after my first phone call to Dell support), a technician came to my place and exchanged the mainboard. I did quite some reboot and sleep/start cycles with various off-time and the notebook works well so far.

Two days instead of one is much better than two weeks, of course! I don't know why I was told that I have to wait for two weeks for the mainboard to be available...

Sounds good Simon, let's hope our computers will last more than a few extra days.

To be honest I've considered Dell as one of Apple's main competitors on the laptop market. But they will have to improve immensely if I ever am to consider Dell again.

My 2,5 year old MacBook pro is a much better computer, and within the first two weeks they would actually ship me a new computer along with a box to ship the defective computer back. Which is to be expected from companies like this. I mean the guts in this laptop is more than a year old. It just seems so amature to be shipping faulty hardware when supply isn't strugling to meet demand.

Also it seems that dell is trying to cover up their faults by sending google hits to their store home page rather than what they are linking to.

They also haven't properly logged the work that has been done onto my personal support page.

Having i synchronized systems, again so amature for a company this size.

In the future I will have a really hard time recommending/using dell and it's their own fault.

I got my laptop back from the Dell service centre yesterday. Apparently they replaced the motherboard and one of the 8Gb RAM modules (all my data is gone from the hard disk as well, which I wasn't made aware of before the service - looks like a new image). The main issue (no ability to turn on the laptop at all) is fixed but it's ability to wake from Sleep still not working, regardless of whether it's on mains power or battery.

The way I got around this before was to make sure that the laptop never goes to sleep in the power management settings and set it to Hibernate instead after a set time or if I close the lid or push the power button. I guess this is a satisfactory work around as I'm not sure how much of a difference there is between Sleep and Hibernate?

There are a lot of complaints about PC's not waking from Sleep on the Microsoft Win 8 forums so not sure where the blame lies - Hardware or Software. Probably a mixture of both.

I finally got my replacement 2 days ago and I am glad to report that the laptop wakes up from sleep.

BUT THERE IS A DIFFERENT PROBLEM

The touchscreen is faulty, it does not respond at all to touch and there is no mentioning of it in the device manager.  I don't know if the system comes without touchscreen or if it is damaged but yet again I have requested my 3rd exchange in the past 2 months, I can officially say that DELL *** but their customer service is still there.

Nick

If you are using a SSD for your OS, to wake from hibernation shouldn't be too much slower than sleep. But they are quite different fundamentally;

Hibernation is arguably safer, as it copies all data from memory to an image on your hard drive. After which it will completely shut down the computer. And then when the computer is rebooted windows will read the hd dump onto memory again and you can continue working.

Sleep works differently. It suspends most power to all but the memory, keeping the memory running will result in an almost instant resume. Where hibernation would take as long as it needs to copy from drive to memory.

XPS 15 comes with Intel rapid start technology. It should work sort of like a mix between hibernation and sleep. It also resumed faster than regular hibernation because it doesn't dump as much garbage as regular windows hibernation. The way it works is that it has a reserved partition, preferably on an SSD, that will recieve a copy of your memory as your computer's battery is almost drained. Or after a set time in sleep. (See Intel rapid start control panel)

I do t know how well the system supports irs and hibernation being available at the same time, but it is redundant regardless.

Bdamir, hmmm touch doesn't work at all? Maybe they forgot to connect it to the mb?

I don't remember exactly what part is was, but I think it was called the power board.

But now the laptop stopped working again. It's totally dead and will not turn on. This would have been the third repair. I've requested a refund - they said no because it was bought in August but they offered a replacement. I've now asked that it be replaced by a different model. We'll see what happens. This model is due for a replacement soon, isn't it??

Incidentally, I just received the new XPS 13 with the 4K touchscreen. It is very nice. Super light and the screen goes edge to edge with almost no bezel. It has the latest intel processor too. We'll see if that one is more reliable but the initial impression is very very positive. 

Anyone know if Dell will replace my broken XPS 15 with a different model if I ask? I have the highest level of service - I think it's called Pro Service and it was bought through a large academic account. 

I think we have the valid basis for a class action suit. Dell has released a machine is obviously flawed. I have two XPS 15s and both have the same problem. As an update to my earlier posts, the machine that was repaired twice developed the same problem again. Dell replaced it with a refurbed model that had the same exact problem. So frustrating because other than for this, it is a great machine.

If you have a defect like this and are interested in join a class action suit, PM me. I have collected about 15 names so far of owners of 9530s with this problem.

Wish I knew this before I ordered. Waited 3 weeks and I just received it last night. Great computer, however not waking from sleep mode is very frustrating. Out of habit I always leave my windows open and shut the lid and when I open the lid my other laptops have always loaded all the windows right away without a problem, but with my new dell xps15 9530 it ***, when i close the lid i have to unplug it and hold the on/off button for 10 seconds and then it does a full restart. WTF, how ridiculous, I hate it, I think i'm sending this back and going with another brand. This is totally unacceptably for what dell is calling their top of the line laptop. 

it took about 2 months of my persistence and a total of 3 Dell replacements to get a working 9530 unit, I hope it doesn't die on me now.  Sure I'll join the list but I'm sure you will need a much higher number of names to get the ground running.

Update: I just had the second replacement of the main board (first was on 2015-02-04, the notebook did not start at all after sending it to sleep and waiting for two hours).

This time, after five weeks, the notebook would not wake from sleep. I could only press Power for 5 seconds and then boot. This was reported by many above. Two days after I reported the problem, the main board was replaced. The only annoying thing this time was the fact that I had to stay on the phone for one hour while some windows drivers were replaced (which did not help), even though I told that the problem occurs from linux AND windows, so windows drivers cannot be the cause.

Lets see how long the notebook works this time and if I also need the often mentioned third support visit - to also replace this power peace mentioned above.

Make them aware of this post again. And make sure they replace the powerboard. (The part that is between the mains and the motherboard) the fact that this is still a old school plug and not something like apples Magsafe or something like that on the Surface pro is a good indication of awful engineering and a part that is prone to break. I am happy to say that since my last post the laptop works perfectly. And I have used it actively since.

Windows does a terrible job when it comes to handling multiple gfx cards so I have disabled one in task manager.

Also the screen lighting seems buggy in windows.

The standby power is aweful. Hibernation lasts like 24 hours on full battery (this is the one with the smallest battery) but compared to my day one released mbp retina that lasts for weeks on standby, I'm not very impressed.

I only use it because I use visual studio.