XPS 9570 and Mobile Precision 5530 Modern Standby Behavior

Modern Standby behavior on Dell's XPS 9570 and Mobile Precision 5530 laptops

Modern Standby from Microsoft can help grow the use of low power idle over the use of the legacy standby mode (S3). You can experience the benefits of this with the faster resume time from the low-power idle states than you would from an S3 resume.

To improve the power management for the battery life, both the XPS 9570 and Mobile Precision 5530 support disconnected standby instead of using connected standby by default. The primary difference between Disconnected and Connected is that the disconnected mode stops all Wi-Fi traffic.

While the default setting of the XPS 9570 and Mobile Precision 5530 is Disconnected Standby, Microsoft has Connected Standby as the default instead. Reinstalling the OS may cause the system behavior to change because of this.

Modern Standby systems can be connected or disconnected while in standby mode. This behavior is dictated by the hardware and/or by the configuration. On any Modern Standby system (whether connected or disconnected), the system remains in S0 while in standby. So background activity such as emails received during sleep and or updating These types of activities can reduce battery life, but it makes resuming the devices quicker so it is a trade-off.

With Modern Standby, the system wakes when a real-time action such as OS maintenance, or a user (or any external device) wakes the system. If you have a concern about battery capacity or the power consumption issue while the system is in modern standby - we have some recommendations in the following solutions section of actions we have found helpful to save battery life when using modern standby mode and/or disconnected standby.

Recommendations for saving Battery life while using Modern Standby

The first step of troubleshooting would be to have the customer run battery reports and sleep studies. The customer can run a sleep study to observe the top offenders and take steps to reduce their top offenders as follows:

How to check whether your system is in Disconnected or Connected Standby mode.

1. Launch the command prompt

2. Type powercfg /a

3. The returned result shows Network Disconnected or Network Connected

We investigated battery drain regardless of Modern standby and/or Disconnected standby on the XPS 9570 and Mobile Precision 5530 systems which showed several variables that contributed to the drain. Outdated or defective drivers, features within the driver which were enabled by default all contribute to the drain, along with an unexpected power source drain after charging on a docking station.

The following actions have shown the best results, but if you are not getting the best results, then please contact Dell.

Work through the following series of steps:

1. Set the system up to use Modern Standby - Disconnected.  This tells the NIC not to stay awake while in sleep mode. This is what Dell sets in the factory by default

2. Disable Wake on Wireless LAN:

   1. Open Device Manager

   2. Open the Network Adapters section

   3. Right-click the Wireless adapter

   4. Go to the Advanced Tab

   5. Go to Properties and select Wake on Magic Packet and set the value to Disabled

   6. Go back to Properties and select Wake on Pattern and set the value to Disabled

   7. Click the Ok button and close the open windows

3. Make sure the system drivers are updated to the latest revision available:

   1. Go to the Dell Support Site

   2. Enter the service tag or express service code to get drivers specific to how the system shipped

      Alternatively, you can choose the XPS 9570 or the Mobile Precision 5530 from the product list to get a general list of drivers for that system

   3. Click the Drivers & Downloads drawer in the menu

   4. Ensure you have the correct operating system set

   5. Set checkmarks next to the drivers you want to install, then click the Download Selected Files button to download and run them on your personal computer

4. Update the following drivers and firmware in the order listed (Only if needed for your particular personal computer):

   1. Go to the Dell Support Site

   2. Enter the service tag or express service code to get drivers specific to how the system shipped

      Alternatively, you can choose your XPS 9570 or the Mobile Precision 5530 from the product list to get a general list of drivers for that system

   3. Click the Drivers & Downloads drawer in the menu

   4. Ensure you have the correct operating system set

   5. Select Serial ATA from the category dropdown

   6. Locate the Toshiba KXG50ZNV256G/KXG50ZNV512G/KXG50ZNV1T02 non-SED solid state drive Firmware Update Ver.A00 or newer

   7. Click the download link and follow the online instructions

   8. Select Network from the category dropdown

   9. For the Precision 5530, locate the Intel BE202/BE200/AX411/AX211/AX210/AX201/AX200/9560/9462/9260/7265/3165 Wi-Fi UWD Driver Ver.A07 or newer. For the XPS 9570, locate the Killer 1435/1435s/1535 Wi-Fi Driver Ver.A06 or newer

   10. Click the download link and follow the online instructions

   11. Select Serial ATA from the category dropdown

   12. Locate the Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver and Management Console Ver.A02 or newer

   13. Click the download link and follow the online instructions

   14. Select Audio from the category dropdown

   15. Locate the Realtek High Definition Audio Driver Ver.A06 or newer

   16. Click the download link and follow the online instructions

   17. Select Video from the category dropdown

   18. Locate the Intel UHD Graphics 630 P630 Ver.A04 or newer

   19. Click the download link and follow the online instructions

   20. Select Video from the category dropdown

   21. Locate the NVIDIA Graphics Application Ver.A02 or newer

   22. Click the download link and follow the online instructions

5. If you have concerns that the system automatically wakes when you unplug a power source from a Thunderbolt dock, update your system BIOS and the Dock Firmware to the latest version available:

   1. Update your system's BIOS:

      1. Go to the Dell Support Site

      2. Enter the service tag or express service code to get drivers specific to how the system shipped

         Alternatively, you can choose your XPS 9570 or the Mobile Precision 5530 from the product list to get a general list of drivers for that system

      3. Click the Drivers & Downloads drawer in the menu

      4. Ensure you have the correct operating system set

      5. Select BIOS from the Category dropdown

      6. Locate the Dell System Model BIOS Revision 1.9.0 or newer

      7. Click the download link and follow the online instructions

   2. Restart the personal computer and connect to the dock

   3. Install the latest version of the dock firmware:

      1. Go to the Dell Support Site

      2. You can choose your dock type from the product list to get a general list of drivers for that dock

      3. Click the Drivers & Downloads drawer in the menu

      4. Ensure you have the correct operating system set

      5. Locate the Dell Thunderbolt dock Firmware Update Utility latest version

      6. Click the download link and follow the online instructions

For more information about Modern Standby and Dell Battery Life, check out the following article:

• The battery drains quicker than expected on a Dell laptop with Modern Standby mode enabled

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