Help! My new Dell Studio XPS 13 Laptop keeps on freezing up!

The tech came over and put in a new board and new multimedia buttons.  He also put in a new base and new bottom.  First off the laptop still wobbles, but more importnatly when we tried to start the comptuer as it was booting it automaticly shut off.  there was another message during post  that said there was a problem the power adapter is below 90W.  However the power adapter says it's only 65 watts.  Please be aware that the power adapter worked fine an 1.5 hours before in the other laptop that being replaced. 

Truth be told I demanded another replacement.  If this don't work I am going to try to get my money back.  What was Dell or anyone thinking when they moved everything to china.  I mean come on already.  How would the exec's feel if they brought something and it was constantly broken.  Let's take this out of profit mode and put it in whats right and wrong.  I'd better better buying a laptop hot off the old 42nd Street in New York

Truth be told I demanded another replacement.  If this don't work I am going to try to get my money back.  What was Dell or anyone thinking when they moved everything to china.  I mean come on already.  How would the exec's feel if they brought something and it was constantly broken.  Let's take this out of profit mode and put it in whats right and wrong.  I'd better better buying a laptop hot off the old 42nd Street in New York

I agree w/ you that Dell really dropped the ball on this laptop but it hasn't got anything to do w/ China.  It is all Dell's fault.  When a company moves its products offshore it is up to the company to properly train the people and have the right QC in place to prevent the product quality from dropping.  Take in case the Apple Macbooks, all Macbooks are made in Shanghai and Apple products quality are probably some of the best so it has nothing to do w/ China.  The main problem w/ this laptop is that Dell probably hired a bunch of incompetent programmers that can't write firmware or drivers.  You've seen their commericals--they hired marijuana smoking pitchmen while Apple is hiring the cream of the crop.

Since installing MAC OS X 10.5.7, I have not had a single crash or hang up yet.  I never had any of the multimedia problems that some of you had.  All my buttons even work in OS X except for the eject button(freakin' MACs, you only eject by dragging your CD/DVD to to the trash can, same thing even w/ a non-slot loading optical drive in my previous Hackingtosh systems).  The only thing not working is WiFi since there are no drivers yet for the Dell 1515 card which isn't a problem for me since I upgraded from the M1330 to the 1340 just for the gigibit ethernet since at home, I don't use wireless.  The drivers for the Dell 1515, however, are already available on Snow Leopard though.

I agree. Its got nothing to do with china. i cant comment on how dell managed to get them self here, simply because i dont know, but i do know that, 1340 is a lovely machine with a huge freeze up problem.

The difference between the MBP and the xps 1340, is that the MBP's dont do Hybrid SLI. apple probably opted out of this thinking there was enough heat already. i bought the xps1340 to get better performance on a lighter package.

I was playing call of duty 4 a while ago, and it didnt freeze while i was playing. But, it froze twice after i quit the game, especially during windows login.

anyone here have a 9400 only 1340? if you do, does it freeze?

ive noticed that when i disable hybrid sli (power saving mode), it doesnt freeze as much, infact it didnt freeze until i enabled it again.

anyways, dell agreed to replace my 1340 with a 1640, because apparently they are out of stock of the 9500 (9400+9200). this is good news because i am not convinced that the freezing issue with the 1340 is anywhere near close to being solved,

Updating the the drivers for Chipset, Graphics card, Wireless card AND changing the following setting to:

Control Panel > Power Options > High Performance

Seemed to reduce the amount of freezes. Dell are planning an update in August according to the audio popping thread

I've spent a week trying to figure out the root cause of this locking up/freezing problem on my XPS 13 laptop.

It would randomly freeze up after loading windows, sometimes browsing the internet, sometimes idling away, very randomly.

I installed Windows Vista 32/64 Ultimate and I'm now using Windows 7 64 Professional.

I used all the drivers for the laptop from the Dell website, even tried the ones on the recovery cd.

I believe the root cause to be the nvidia drivers for the hybrid sli 9400 + 9200 graphics card.

I'm currently able to type this message without my laptop locking up because I have uninstalled the nvidia graphics drivers.

Currently my cards are running as standard VGA graphics adaptor and I haven't had an issue for 2 days running (laptop being on the whole time).

However the graphics performance is poor and I would like a solution asap.

Some stable nvidia graphics card drivers would be nice. Or a way to disable the hybrid configuration for the time being...

I've currently got a case open with Dell and hope they can come to some resolution or I will be asking for a refund.

I was hoping if people suffering from the same issues could try uninstalling the nvidia drivers and see if that helps...

I'll try uninstall the nVidia drivers when I get back into town. So far over the past two days, my machine has refused to turn on after pressing the power button (the lights lit up, but no POST ever occurred), the media bar has stopped working, and it keeps waking up from sleep and draining my battery. The latter had been happening a lot so I normally just hibernate it, but while traveling hibernation is a pain so I've been putting it to sleep. It's wonderful having your laptop wake up while on a plane. :)

Other than that, even in Power Save mode with Hybrid SLI turned off, I'm still experiencing 1 or 2 lockups per day. I've emailed my Dell rep and he is aware of my problems. I really hope Dell support is able to resolve it when I get back into town. I hate having to escalate things.

I've spent a week trying to figure out the root cause of this locking up/freezing problem on my XPS 13 laptop. It would randomly freeze up after loading windows, sometimes browsing the internet, sometimes idling away, very randomly. I installed Windows Vista 32/64 Ultimate and I'm now using Windows 7 64 Professional. I used all the drivers for the laptop from the Dell website, even tried the ones on the recovery cd. I believe the root cause to be the nvidia drivers for the hybrid sli 9400 + 9200 graphics card. I'm currently able to type this message without my laptop locking up because I have uninstalled the nvidia graphics drivers. Currently my cards are running as standard VGA graphics adaptor and I haven't had an issue for 2 days running (laptop being on the whole time). However the graphics performance is poor and I would like a solution asap. Some stable nvidia graphics card drivers would be nice. Or a way to disable the hybrid configuration for the time being... I've currently got a case open with Dell and hope they can come to some resolution or I will be asking for a refund. I was hoping if people suffering from the same issues could try uninstalling the nvidia drivers and see if that helps...

Just to confirm with you when I had my oringal laptop I had an issue where my dvd burner would free while coping and pasting to the hard drive or any other device IE flash drive, external drive)  When I disabled the video card that was the only time it worked.  I to also installing vista 32 (from the partition and or disk) along with also the vista 64 with no other running problems nothing seemed to work.  I only had the 9400M G but still its the same drivers I think we are on to something

Seriously, try turning off your wifi when you dont need it.. those one- or two lockups a day might just vanish, myself and another forum member are finding the same thing.. we just need to prove it happens to more than us :).

either by turning off the wifi switch or disabling the card.. same thing.

I should point out, im using the 1510 wifi card.

Atreidae,

I'm actually not having issues with the wifi. My XPS 13 actually has the 1515 wifi card.

I need my wifi on all the time and it's been on for 4 days now without issue.

I'm hoping you're suffering from another issue...

anyone here have a 9400 only 1340? if you do, does it freeze? ive noticed that when i disable hybrid sli (power saving mode), it doesnt freeze as much, infact it didnt freeze until i enabled it again. anyways, dell agreed to replace my 1340 with a 1640, because apparently they are out of stock of the 9500 (9400+9200). this is good news because i am not convinced that the freezing issue with the 1340 is anywhere near close to being solved,

As I stated before, I have the 9400 only not the SLI 9500 and it freezes a lot.  On the insanelymac forums, the guy there thinks the issue is w/ the nvidia SATA drivers.  I always had my external eSATA hard drive connected to my laptop so that could be the cause.  But Mac OS X is running so well right now on this laptop that I really don't want to format everything and give windows a try again w/o the eSATA connected.  Over a week on OSX w/o a single crash/hangup and I'm running utorrent and have my eSATA drive connected at all times.

Just a small update.

Dell want to swap out the motherboard on the laptop within the next 2 days...

Is that the solution for everything?

Anyway, I'll let you guys know if this helps, you never know!

FOUND SOLUTION: I had that problem with sleeping and freezing, but found a solution.  The issue is in the hibernation settings. By default, the XPS 1340 goes into hibernation when you press the power button, and also after prolonged sleep.  According to this post on notebookreview (http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4870634), there is a challenge with the software drivers that wake the laptop from hibernation.  There is a hint that they are working on a solution, but since hibernation is nice, but stability is nicer, I disabled hibernation for now and the problem seems to have gone away.  You can always reenable it later when a fix for the problem appears (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928897).

Here is how you do it:

1. For good measure, make sure you are on the current BIOS (v7) and newest nVidia drivers from the Dell website.  No sense making it any harder on yourself than you need to.
2. Next, disable hibernation completely on the laptop.  The descriptions here http://kaliphonia.com/content/windows/how-to-disable-windows-vista-64-bit-hibernate are the most complete.
3. Finally, go to Control Panel > Mobile PC > Power Options and under your current settings, select Change Plan Settings then Change Advanced Power Settings.  As you expand the dropdowns, you will see that Hibernate is still listed in a few places, but when you click on those dropdowns, it disappears.  That's because it is no longer an option.  Select Sleep in each case.

That should do it.  Feel free to continue to discuss the pros and cons of Chinese manufacturing, if you wish.

FOUND SOLUTION: I had that problem with sleeping and freezing, but found a solution.  The issue is in the hibernation settings. By default, the XPS 1340 goes into hibernation when you press the power button, and also after prolonged sleep.  According to this post on notebookreview (http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4870634), there is a challenge with the software drivers that wake the laptop from hibernation.  There is a hint that they are working on a solution, but since hibernation is nice, but stability is nicer, I disabled hibernation for now and the problem seems to have gone away.  You can always reenable it later when a fix for the problem appears (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928897). Here is how you do it: For good measure, make sure you are on the current BIOS (v7) and newest nVidia drivers from the Dell website.  No sense making it any harder on yourself than you need to. Next, disable hibernation completely on the laptop.  The descriptions here http://kaliphonia.com/content/windows/how-to-disable-windows-vista-64-bit-hibernate are the most complete. Finally, go to Control Panel > Mobile PC > Power Options and under your current settings, select Change Plan Settings then Change Advanced Power Settings.  As you expand the dropdowns, you will see that Hibernate is still listed in a few places, but when you click on those dropdowns, it disappears.  That's because it is no longer an option.  Select Sleep in each case. That should do it.  Feel free to continue to discuss the pros and cons of Chinese manufacturing, if you wish.

hmm this is interresting and thanks for the post. if it works for you, thats great!

ive had hibernation disabled for a while now, but i still get freezes.

I've give that solution a try.

10 mins in, no freezing....

I'll keep it on all night to see if it has done the trick...

Cheers