DELL PRECISION 7920 Freezing (Windows 10)

@DELL-Cares 

I'm running sfc /scannow right now, I will post the results when that finish.

Hello luke357, we have engaged with Frederic.Noiseux on his concerns to figure out the the possible cause and a potential solution. I have suggested a sfc scan and would suggest the same to you before we further investigate this. If the issue remains, would it be possible to run the DISM to restore Windows and let us know? ^SP

@lukes357 Yes I can confirm that this issue happens more often for us when the computer is idle but not exclusively for us. I'm still looking for a way to trigger the issue so I had one of those computer running stress test (CPU/GPU/SSD) for about 1 week but it did not crash so far.

From discussion with our users, I would say that about 60% of the crashes are when the computer is idle (please note that sleep is disable so it does not go into sleep). We also had multiple crashes while working in NX CAD software (this is not realy revelant since those users work in NX all day long), we also had crashes while working in Ansys (also not revelant since that user is working in Ansys all day long) and we did had 1 crash where the user just came to the office and only had google chrome started.

Yes I had the same problem, this issue is so random that I also tough I had fixed it when I swapped the SSD for another brand but the issue came back after 7 days. I agree that DELL must do something, those are some realy expensive computer and our CAD users are plagued with this issue. I also found a thread on reddit named "Dell Precision 7920" with people having the same issue :

"Did you end up with a fix? I have been running in to the same problem for about 3 to 4 months. When I first contacted Dell they sent over the Driver Library CAB but it really didn't help at all. Mine does not BSOD only Freezes, no relevant logs files and most times the mouse still works, and you can \\ into the Machines local drives and access the event view via a remote machine.

If you are still having this problem can you confirm that once the machine is "Locked" if you can remote into the machines local drives.

Also Shutdown -i doesn't work on affected machine."

I am also running into this same problem, during my time attempting to troubleshoot I have noticed that in the more recent cases I have been able to remote to the affected machines` local drives, and also able to access the computer management console remotely. However the logs seem to stop logging once machine locks up, if I reboot using the power button Event viewer does then log a button press and forced shutdown. Seems to have no relevant event logs, also RDP doesnt work, it kicks back a "time sync" error but thats cause by the affected machine clock seems to freeze to.

I have tested this with Stock 2.0.5, 2.1.4 and 2.5.0 bios using full manual build WIN 10 LTSC and a known working LTSB image. 

I contacted Dell and was given the Driver Library Cab link but even with using all the newest drivers it still happens. I havent seen a trend or something that triggers it just random....

Hi, I have the same problem with a 7920 (64RAM, QUADRO P4000, 1TB SSD M.2, 2TB HDD). The first symptoms were the freezing of the mouse and, eventually, the BSOD "DRIVER IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL IaStorB.sys" appeared when the equipment was suspended and reactivated. Today I update BIOS and drivers (Management, IRST, Nvidia), and the fault persists.Then I read in another forum that the failure was due to Intel Rapid Storage Technology (Intel RST). Install the latest version, the error persists. In the device manager there are 2 DVD drives on alert. Several users say the fault is resolved by disconnecting the optical drive, because this device has a fault with the IRST driver that Intel has not yet been able to fix. Tomorrow I will disconnect the optical drive and tell you if the problem is solved. 

I'm sorry for my grammar.

@lukes357 

@Frederic.Noiseux 

Hi,

I've got the same random freezing...but i haven't got any DVD or CD on my Precision 7920...

New, yesterday, BSOD "driver power state Failure"...

Hello,

I have the same issues with 2 Precision 7920.

Dell really need to find a solution because those are very expansive machines and my users cannot use them.

Hola Carlos @Carlos Colina  buenos dias.

We have 5 7920s here, I mentioned to DELL that there is not doubt in my mind that this needs a firmware update. They mentioned they are working on a fix. By the way, neither of the machines we have have DVD drives on it and they experience the issue (all of them) I currently have one on my desk and I disabled everything, from CPU power saving states and SMT from the BIOS, 7 days in and no issues, but I'm still no sure, however this machine never lasted 7 days before. On another detail, other machines can go for months without the issue and then freeze. I have worked with @Frederic.Noiseux  about a theory that the issue is power management on the disk itself, I mean OS vs disk power mgmt, but so far no conclusions, however my machine is also running a PS script every hour to report drive states and send that to my email so (assuming is the disk 'sleeping') this will maybe keep the disk 'wake' (It's just an assumption I made). Thanks for the report. I'm pretty sure based on the people that have joined the thread that this is not a configuration issue, I'm sure this is a OS vs drivers issue at the firmware level (driver -> firmware).

@J-PHil This is what I believe is happening like I said in other post in this thread, that it could be a power issue waking a device.

Just wanted to add that I also have six Precision 7920's as configured from Dell now running Windows 10 1809 and one with 1903, have freshly installed Windows on one, swapped out the SSD on another, all are up to date with any drivers/firmware/BIOS available.

Same sort of lockups occur as previously posted, when idle and when in use.

Quadro P1000, 256GB SSD O/S and 512GB secondary spinning drive, Xeon Silver 4110, 4x8GB DDR4 2666MHz RDIMM ECC Memory.

Sometimes no lockups on one day, sometimes up to 10. Meanwhile the OptiPlex PCs in our office pretty much never crash.

I have the same issue with 3 Precision 7920 workstations that have 128 GB of RAM. What I found to be the issue is the network adapter is not registering the host (A or AAAA) record with the DNS server. When this happens the computer is connected to the internet without registering to the DNS server. Windows 10 relies on DNS so it causes a lot of issues. For example you can't open the start menu when the issue happens if you have the weather tile on your start menu. You can ping computers but you won't be able to resolve any host names. Internet Explorer or any of the other browsers won't open or hang. 

Please check your system event log for Event ID 8017 The system failed to register host (A or AAAA) resource records for network adapter with settings. Please reply back if you find this in the event log. You will find this error in the time frame of the issue.

I had the same issue with the Dell Latitude 7480 and 7490 laptops connected to the WD15 docking station. The fix was a combination of driver and firmware updates. Dell had replaced the system boards and that would fix it for a little while. The strange thing is it didn't happen to every system. Dell tried blaming it on our network and system image but we proved the computer wasn't sending the packets properly.With the laptop the issue happened when undocking the laptop and that made it easy to reproduce. This is a tougher situation with a desktop. Hopefully Dell will come up with a fix for it soon. I will post my updates from Dell.

Good information. I do see a lot of 8018 warnings in the Event Viewer system logs (The system failed to register host (A or AAAA) resource records (RRs) for network adapter). However they show up anywhere from .5 hours to 24 hours before. I checked an OptiPlex connected to the same switch and found it had just as many of these 8018's, but has only locked up and had to be crashed 4 times. Maybe that's just luck? But the OptiPlex user here always lets me know if they are having computer problems.

@Brunink 

I have zero event logs with that ID/issue. it doesn't make sense to me that the DNS registration is the issue, machines disconnected from the network then should stop working correctly and that doesn't happen. Or maybe you wanted to mean is a issue with the NIC/driver? Yes you will not able get to the wheater service, etc. but fom there to freeze a system there is a difference. What happens here lies ont the Kernel side on a Driver interfacing with a firmware, at least I'm already convinced of that.

Can anybody test the following to see if the issue keep happening:

Go to the BIOS, disable all CPU power saving states (basically all settings related with power saving), you have to go through all the options in all the sections just to find them all. And (just in case) also disable SMT, leave only what is needed for the system to boot. I have this machine that used to crash every 4 o 5 days still working correctly after a week, and It have been idle most of the time. In our case 100% of the machines present the issue when the user comeback in the morning (or when they just comeback from lunch, etc), therefore the machines were idle. At least in our case this has never happened when they are actively working, which suggest a power management issue, somewhere.

In this way we remove a lot of funcionality from the firmware settings (power related) and the OS cannot take advantage of that (Modern StandBy etc.)

We’ve seen this on 7 7920s. I believe we’ve disabled all power saving settings in the BIOS (unless we are missing something). At least we have matched the settings to the PC from another 7920, which does not have this issue. Also, a PC experiencing the issue was updated to the same BIOS version and settings as the working PC but still locked up. The lockups stopped when we swapped the HD with a clone of the working PC’s OS, suggesting the issue is at the OS level (Windows Updates, configuration, drivers, etc.)

One thing we noticed was that if we tried to remotely kill our application process with taskkill, it would not die. However, if we unplugged a USB camera and then killed the process, the OS almost always returned to normal (a few times it blue screened, reporting a pending IRQ on the USB hub). However, with the camera unplugged the lockup still happens.

We also noticed that it seems to be related to the network. We have only seen it on systems that have several network devices connected through a switch. With the network devices unplugged we do not see the issue. The issue also does not appear to be reproducible while running wireshark. Another thing that points towards the network: after the PC locks up and we hard reboot, we cannot open a new explorer window. We click it 10 times and nothing happens, but if we disconnect all network cables (or wait 5+ minutes) all 10 windows will open.