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March 22nd, 2019 07:00
XPS 15-9570, not working with 2008 E228WFP
We have several students with the same issue out of the box. Seems like a BIOS update or something may be needed. We have labs setup with monitors with HDMI cables hooked up and everything works fine except for these new Dell XPS 15-9570 Laptops. Oddly, we have two students where theirs work fine, but the rest will not. I just came back from a class of about 11 students. Two of them work fine and the rest won't work with our monitors it seems. One of the students Dell that won't work is service tag: XPS 15-9570. The monitors in most of our labs are E228WFP that have a DVI to HDMI cable plugged in.The HDMI gets plugged into the laptop. I do not see a service tag on any of them. Only number I see on them is a bar code and probably the serial: CN-0KU311-64180-82R-165S.
When they plug the laptop into the monitor, the monitor stays black. Messing with the Intel software it will eventually detect the second monitor, but will not display anything on the monitor and it just stays black. I have an Anker USB-C to HDMI adapter and plugged it into the laptop and the monitor worked then and gave that as a workaround. So, I'm thinking it doesn't like these old monitors and possible a firmware update may be needed.
We tried another monitor that the instructor had in their studio and used an HDMI to HDMI cable and the laptop worked fine with it. So, again, it seems to be not liking these older monitors for whatever reason as I have seen suggested on forums. We have several students with the same issue out of the box. Seems like a BIOS update or something may be needed. We have labs setup with monitors with HDMI cables hooked up and everything works fine except for these new Dell XPS 9570 Laptops. Oddly we have two students where theirs work fine, but the rest will not. Here are two other XPS service tags, one is working fine with external monitor and the other is not. This one works fine with external monitors we have (E228WFP monitor): Dell XPS 15-9570 Service Tag: . This one will not work: Dell XPS 15 9570 Service Tag: .
Dell-SreejithR
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3.4K Posts
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March 25th, 2019 05:00
Thank you for your message. What happens when the monitor is connected? Do you get an error? Is the monitor detected in the OS?
For my reference, please click on the message tab next to your avatar– click “New Message” & search for my Dell username (Sreejith R) & send a private message with the service tag, registered name & email address.
How to locate the service tag
DELL-Chris M
Community Manager
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March 26th, 2019 09:00
* All laptops must have their AC power adapters attached
* Remove any docks from the troubleshooting
* Are the working and not working laptops running the same latest BIOS 1.8.1? Same GTX 1050 driver 24.21.13.9793, A02?
* If ALL of the non-working laptops (HDMI to DVI cable) work when connecting to a recent monitor via a straight HDMI to HDMI cable, that means that the laptop HDMI out port is working. It is not feasible for Dell to create a firmware on a new laptop to account for out of warranty 2008 monitors. We would need to see issue with current monitors
cashxx
6 Posts
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March 26th, 2019 11:00
We can't upgrade multiple labs of hundreds of perfectly working monitors that work fine with everything else except these model of laptops. Maybe the solution on our end is to look at Lenovo for next quarter then. There are others customers who have the same issue. Requiring them to buy a new monitor just doesn't make any sense. It is just a monitor signal not being output correctly for some odd reason.
jphughan
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May 2nd, 2019 07:00
@cashxxmy guess is that the reason this HDMI to DVI problem arose with the XPS 15 9570 even though it worked fine with previous XPS 15 generations is because the 9570 is the first model in the line to include HDMI 2.0, so something had to change there. Current Intel GPUs do not natively support HDMI 2.0, so vendors who want to implement it have to use a DisplayPort 1.2 output from the GPU and insert an "LSPCON" chip into the signal path that converts it to HDMI 2.0. I suspect that the LSPCON chip will turn out to be the root cause, although I doubt we'll ever get confirmation from anybody in a position to provide it. Whether this problem is fixable via firmware, or caused by a hardware implementation error, or somehow an unavoidable consequence of this design even when properly implemented is also as yet unknown, because thus far Dell hasn't even officially acknowledged that HDMI to DVI on the XPS 15 9570 is a problem, despite multiple reports on this forum about it. But I would say at best you'll be waiting for a BIOS/firmware update to resolve this, again if it can be fixed that way at all. Ironically, there have also been threads relating to previous XPS 15 models about BIOS updates killing the system's HDMI output completely, and in a way that isn't recoverable even by rolling back to the previous BIOS release.
And as it happens, a similar issue came to light recently with the XPS 13 9350 and new Dell USB-C displays. In brief, when you connect the XPS 13 9350 to the USB-C input of Dell's new USB-C displays, you get no video. This is true even though the XPS 13 works fine with other USB-C displays, and the Dell USB-C displays work fine with other USB-C video source devices, and the XPS 13 9350 even works fine with the Dell USB-C display if you connect using a USB-C to DisplayPort cable (although you lose USB data and power in that case). Dell DID officially acknowledge this issue in a KB article, but the answer was basically, "This won't be fixed because we consider the XPS 13 9350 end-of-life, but things work fine if you add one of our docking stations between the system and display." Not ideal, to say the least. And they didn't even explain the underlying cause.
cashxx
6 Posts
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May 2nd, 2019 07:00
@jphughanWe have also tried a newer Asus monitor that is straight HDMI and it works as well. Seems to only be a problem on older monitors where we are going from HDMI to DVI on the monitor.
Going to get a splitter and strip the HDCP and see if that helps at all. Either way, it is a problem. If it isn't HDCP then I would guess it's a problem with firmware or something like I originally thought.
jphughan
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May 2nd, 2019 07:00
EDIT: Never mind. I see that you already tested a USB-C to HDMI adapter successfully.
jphughan
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May 2nd, 2019 07:00
@DELL-Chris M perhaps instead of looking at this as not feasible on the basis that the monitors are out of warranty, you could look at it as, "The current generation of one of Dell's flagship notebooks doesn't support DVI -- even though there's absolutely no good reason that HDMI to single-link DVI shouldn't work given that the video signals are actually electrically identical, and basically every other device with an HDMI output can feed a DVI input, and therefore there's an entirely reasonable expectation from our customers that this will work on this system." Displays typically have much longer lifecycles than PCs, so writing this issue off simply because DVI is an old standard is what isn't feasible, if you ask me.
cashxx
6 Posts
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May 2nd, 2019 07:00
Is this possibly caused by HDCP do you think? Or what does Dell think the cause is as I keep seeing this problem in the forums.
cashxx
6 Posts
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May 6th, 2019 08:00
Just an fyi........if you throw an HDMI splitter in the mix it also fixes it. HDMI output from the laptop into the splitter and then from the splitter HDMI to DVI into the monitor. Get a picture every time. Makes me think it is HDCP, but not sure.