Studio 1737 DPC Latency

Hey Bill-B

Thanks for your reply, and may i say thank you for your straight talking honesty (really goes a long way).

Yeah sorry when I said engineer i know that they are not engineers at all (english colloquialism, my bad!) like you and I, i should however have said customer service representative working in the tech support department. lol.

too bad regarding the mobo respin but very happy to hear that this issue is at a kinda high priority, I will live with the issue for a while it's such a nice laptop that i dont want to get rid of it just fix the DPC issue, ill use my desktop in the mean time.

Many Many thanks for your constant attention Bill we the community really appreciate it.

Congrats on the baby by the way, me and my mrs are trying.....

DuDeX

Thanks for the effort DudexSnave,

I was very happy to hear Dell would replace the motherboard to fix the DPC latency problems but now there's again bad news. There seems to be a big communication problem at the Dell support center.... Whatever solution they come up with, I really want this fixed, some budget laptops are better for audio purposes then the (relatively) expensive 1737.

Fons909

OK now getting angry just trying to confirm this fix and another engineer has told me that there is no new motherboard that has fixed the issue and they are still looking into this issue!!!!  Is there a new motherboard or what!! Are dell working on a fix!!! different engineers are saying different things we need clarity on this!!!!!!!!!   Bill can you confirm any of this? DuDeX

I need to get on the same page with you, terminology-wise. When you say "engineer," do you mean someone you talked to in Tech Support chat, phone or email? If so, those are not engineers in the sense that I"m thinking (university degreed professional).

There is no mobo respin in the works for this issue that any engineer has made me aware of. As far as I know, they are looking at this from a BIOS angle and have elevated it to a high priority. That means there are a lot of teams working on root cause identification and fix implementation, but there is no "equation" one can apply to the level of attention that would tell us an exact or approximate time for a fix. It does mean, however, that we are applying resources to the issue to get a fix implemented as quickly as we can.

I promise to keep sending over almost daily reports of the conversation taking place here, and requesting information. As soon as I hear anything, I promise to post back here.

Many Many thanks for your constant attention Bill we the community really appreciate it. Congrats on the baby by the way, me and my mrs are trying.....   DuDeX

You're welcome and thank you. Good luck with the baby. "Trying" is fun. Ben is 10 months old now, and a very happy little boy. He crawls around and gets into everything he can reach. He is fascinated by blinds and remote controls. Not so much with baby toys.

The thing is I don't think the effect on basic peformance is being realized. I know alot of us are using 'specialized' applications, etc. But basic Windows operation is affected as well.

For instance, insert a cd or dvd into the drive. Open Windows Media Player and play a music or video file from the hardrive for instance. Eject the drive and observe how the audio jitters and stutters horribly.

The dvd eject touch button causes a HUGE spike interrupting the cpu from other processes which is a really bad problem to have. You basically have to use the windows eject by right clicking on your drive icon and ejecting that way unless your application of choice has a soft eject for the dvd drive.

The other downfall is when you supend the acpi.sys thread, the touch eject button no longer works.

One of my bug requests to NI was to add a drive eject function to the application so we wouldn't have to use the eject touch button as a workaround. And that has helped the cause in that regard.

So it's not just affecting our audio applications specifically, basic Windows audio/video playback is affected by other issues due to this issue as well.

I just wanted to add that, because the engineers should be aware of this problem as well.

LOL, Techy in the making then huh!

You mean "engineer in the making." :emotion-4:

You're welcome and thank you. Good luck with the baby. "Trying" is fun. Ben is 10 months old now, and a very happy little boy. He crawls around and gets into everything he can reach. He is fascinated by blinds and remote controls. Not so much with baby toys.

LOL, Techy in the making then huh!

Bill,

Thanks for all the work you do! Hopefully the new bios will solve all the issues with the DPC spiking.  I have the 1737 and awaiting the update. I managed to disable a bunch of stuff and it has calmed down to where I can use Ableton Live. The A07 update did make an impact from the A06 Bios, I hope the next bios updates resolves it entirely.

Trent

Hello, i have a 1535 since 2008. I also have big troubles with DPC spiking when I do a DJ set.
I hope that the 1535 also gets a BIOS update within a few weeks, the last one was in december 2008!
Thank you.

Tim

<Admin Note: Service tag removed due to privacy policy>

I am quite convinced dcp spikes are a problem on (all?) current laptop platforms produced by Dell. 10 days ago I ordered a Vostro 1220. Very nice little machine, quiet, fast SSD, lots of RAM, powerful CPU @2,53Ghz  ... and totally outclassed by my 3 year old HP Pavillion with its AMD Turion @ 1,6 GHz when it comes to audio streaming. (The HP also has WiFi, LAN and all the notebook gadgets.) Very good DCP Checker results for the Pavillion, no crackles, nothing (but too slow, too big and too heathy :-(

As a freelance musician and guitar teacher I bought the Vostro for one and only one purpose: running audio apps on it. And that's what a brand new Dell laptop almost worth  1600€ / 2240$ is not able to do. I spent a couple of nights on that dcp issue, tried every workaround and tweak recommended, installed Win 7 Enterprise. All and everything to no avail. So many hours wasted. And even if suspending acpi.sys would have worked - from a system in that price range I expect more. I expect a flawless workflow, many productive hours and no fiddleing around.

The Vostro was to be my 3rd Dell machine. I had experienced Dell computers as reliable and well thought of and had used them as DAWs in the past. Now that has changed completely . I am not irritated because they take it back without making a fuzz. Customer care accepted my reasons, have been friendly and tried their best. 

Nevertheless I am profoundly disappointed. That little machine could really have been something! But it is not. Now I consider getting myself a Sony Vaio when I receive my refund. They get rather good reviews.

I read through this thread and I really appreciate Bill's commitment. Certainly not an easy task and not making him very popular at Dell. Thank you, Bill!

For me it is all sorted out. From now on Dell Computers and me will go separate ways. I did not want that.

Bill, Here is an interesting test for the Dell engineers. Open up the DPC Latency Checker on one of the laptops and then open Task Manager and goto the Networking Tab. You'll see consistant DCP Spikes.

On the other hand, if you disable all of the network adapters the DPC spikes subside with a max spike of 1400. But it would allow for the smooth operation of ableton or any other audio application. I take that back, it just spiked at 3000 - 5000 about every 5 minutes.

Trent

Thanks for this Bill, Having a tricky time deciding what to do. Rang technical support/customer care and had alot of difficulty explaining  the nature of the problem ( "no, really, you trying to fix the speakers on the laptop to get rid of the pops and clicks really isn't going to work out" and "well yes i could try to update all the drivers you mention but it won't fix the problem as it is motherboard/bios related"). They said I could return them, but at a charge of £20 per laptop. So I'll try emailing them today instead. Is there any internal code, phrase or problem number that will help them categorise the problem correctly and also see that it is already a known fault?

Also, I'm still in two minds about whether sending them back is completely the right thing to do as the issue sounds like its is being given some degree of priority. I'm hoping I can persuade customer care to consider allowing me the option to hold on a few weeks while the fix is in the make, so as to save the bother of packing them up only to reorder a few weeks down the track if things get sorted (I'm really happy with pretty much all other aspects of laptop). Out of interest, are the (bios) teams that are currently on the case relativley confident they can resolve the DPC latency  issue, regardless of timeframe, now that they perhaps understand the problem better, or are they not able to say with any degree of certainty? 

Thanks again.

P.S. had some good results testing audio stuff with the acpi.sys workaround, both in Vista64 and XP32sp3, managing to get some good low latency noise free streaming. Others seem to have issues in Vista64 but using processhacker and turning off wireless all worked out, even managing to get asio4all working with on board audio ok (Not really the way forward, but had heard they weren't compatible).

Hi Bill,

You can download a copy of Process Hacker free from here:

http://processhacker.sourceforge.net/

Thanks again for your help

OK, guys. Updating.

I checked out a Studio XPS 1340 with Nvidia graphics Friday and took it home. I am running BIOS A05, and all other drivers are updated off the Dell support site. Clean Vista32 install. I ran DPC Latency Checker and got almost all red bars. We continue to investigate the issue. I have no firm ETA on a fix, but will post back as soon as I hear anything concrete.

Can someone post a link to a free download of the process hacker you guys are using to suspend ACPI.sys? I know it's back in the thread somewhere, but could ya help a brother out with some easy link love?

DJQuartz,

I am going to get with you in private message and hope to set up a time I can chat with you by phone while I have this St XPS 1340 in front of me. I want to document in detail a few of the usage cases where you see the problem outside of DPC Latency Checker.

Thanks to everyone for your persistence and patience. I'm with you until this is fixed.

You may also need to install microsoft debugging tools to enable processhacker to be able to work properly:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/installx86.mspx#a

once installed, acpi.sys can be stopped with processhacker (with the processes tab open, double click "system" in the tree view, in the "threads" tab  it is listed as one of the running services. (its easiest to order them by "start address" in the threads tab as it should be the first item alphabetically. In vista there are two running acpi.sys threads, one of which has an extrapolated name, that both need suspending using right mouse click>suspend). and those nasty red bars should evaporate... make sure you re-enable before shutdown or to re-enable buttons/plugandplayusb etc...