Bug: New XPS 13 9300 slow boot caused by intel INF errors

Back in 2014, I bought a Lenovo X1-Carbon Touch ThinkPad for $2200 (a loaded Windows UltraBook). My first ever Lenovo, but my decision was based on reviews of this Gen-2 and also dependability of previous ThinkPads . Treated it like a baby, hardly took it out-of-office, and never dropped it or anything like that. It was running Win8Pro-64bit and was rock-solid for first 2 years and everything worked perfectly.

It had a 2 year warranty and motherboard failed at 2.5 years. All expensive components (i7-CPU and 8gb-RAM) were soldered-in, so all replacement motherboards are very expensive (Lenovo wanted $800 for one). I ended-up installing a refurbished one from Encompass. Replacing motherboard is not easy and is more like working on a iPhone or iPad. Turns out, many of us on Internet fell into same X1-Carbon-Gen2 hole.

Then, at 3.5 years old, I noticed its once perfect (Hi-DPI) IPS screen now has some pretty notice-able image-retention (turns-out to be another commonly reported ThinkPad problem). The old X1-Carbon still works, but the screen's image-retention is pretty ridiculous.

Only thing I can recommend (and I follow this myself now) is to keep all machines under extended warranty. Definitely not like the old days. This includes anything with a motherboard, which is pretty-much everything electronic these days (like even appliances).

@Kyle Sh. in regards to screen flickering. I think it comes from the settings in Intel Graphic Driver. If you open it and select "System" tab and then on top "Power" you will find settings for adaptive colour, brightness etc.

I still haven't decided what to do with my Dell. I can't find any other device that would have 16:10 screen ratio and matt screen. Samsung Galaxy Book Ion and Flex seems to be decent devices but both have very reflective screens. Flex also has a very shallow keyboard. HP Spectre x360 comes as a next choice but that's another glossy panel, question how bad it is. 

100s of devices out there but nothing that would tick all the boxes. There seem to be a room on a market for well build 16:10 ratio devices with 13.4'' or 14'' panels.

Sorry a bit of topic

This will probably drive you to smash your head on the wall - 

I needed a W10 virtual machine (VM Ware).  Just finished installing the OS, updates and the VM Integration tools.  Nothing else.

Unless you tell me otherwise, vmware has no fast startup concept - the option certainly is not there.
From cold boot (when I see the windows logo) to Welcome User name: 9 seconds.  From there to usable: 10 seconds.

So where our 9300's are taking almost a min/min +, a virtual machine running within the 9300 at only 4gb ram, 2core and 2 processors shared with everything else running on the 9300...and it boots up in a ready to use status in 19 seconds.

I'm sure if I freed up some resource and threw some more ram bearing in mind the laptop has 16gb it would be even quicker.

@Anthony81 I believe the only other laptop with a 16:10 screen apart from Macs is the Lenovo S540-13ARE but of course port wise nothing beats the Dell

@aj84  thats a good observation.

The main problem here in my opinion is not Windows or any drivers. The way to prove it is to try to run for example Linux from a USB drive. I takes a lot of time for it to even start loading. Similar delay we get when we boot into Windows. That's why installing drivers, changing SSD drive etc. makes no difference.

I had another call yesterday with Dell. Since now I have 2 laptops at home that have exactly the same issue they accepted that something is not right on a bigger scale. I also told them about this forum and that I am not the only user complaining. Case is now going to be escalated to level 3 team. I told them about Linux boot time from external USB drive too. Once they get back to me with news I will post here.

Great to hear that you got a level3 contact on this one. I'm a new user to this forum and have the same problem. Have done alot of troubleshooting, and will get in touch with support as of tomorrow. I'm on a 32GB/2TB (Samsung PM981a) NVMe SSD.

The problem was there out of the box. Have tried fresh installing Win10v2004 from USB, cleaning all drives etc. Have tried disabling alot of HW in BIOS (Thunderbolt, Sound chip (mic+speaker) etc). Tested all drivers I can find, both provided on delivery, from dell.com and Intel's own. Have tried both AHCI-mode and the default RAID-config for the SSD.Enabling/disabling fastboot, enabling/disabling secure boot, and timed a Window fail safe boot.
No result at all yet.

Ran Windows Performance Recorder thanks to tips in this thread, I also could see that PreSMSS phase of boot took 34sec, and seem to be most idle.

I'm glad you went through so many tests - I was going to do something similar and start switching off various modules in the BIOS and also the AHCI/RAID but clearly this has not worked

I might try for the fun of it to install w7 or w8.1 on it to see if that has the same issue 

@aj84I wouldn't waste time installing anything since trying to boot Linux distribution from external USB drive takes ages too

Understood and I won't waste time

Out of interest, does anyone know if the new XPS 15 suffers from the same issue?

If this helps boost things I've also had the same issue.  The only response I've ever gotten from support was that it was a software issue.

I asked software from boot, from drivers, from windows, from what.  They said windows and please pay for support.

Hi All,

I am still waiting for Dell Level 3 team to get back to me. I keep getting messages from their support that they are still "investigating" this issue so maybe finally they are working on a fix. Will post updates once I get something new from them.

Thanks for the update.

I do a lot of reinstalls for laptops I repair and usually forget about performance because so many are on the go.

Today, I have a 8th Gen i7-8565U / 16GB ram Lenovo Yoga 730.
Fairly slow/old compared to the Dell XPS 9300 

I just did a full clean install and drivers install.  Switched off Fast start and it's boot times with it switched off from cold start:
7.24 seconds to the splash screen with user name
11.66 seconds to a ready state

I am actually embarrassed how long this 2k XPS 9300 takes!

Calbenzo1,

I understand that it was just serviced. Please connect with the support assist app to see if the app can resolve the issue.

I just got my computer back from Dell repair whereupon they replaced the entire mainboard due to the BT disappearing and requiring a period restart to function again.   Well, I'm still having the BT issue (at least once thus far), and the boot time is still way slow!!