Dell XPS15 9550 Random hang/freeze

Hi,

I am getting random hangs/freezes while using the computer, as in, the system is responsive, the mouse can move, but any attempt to start or close a program results in that program freezing. I've noticed the disk activity goes to max and cpu usage goes down as it happens.

The strange this is, I've currently got two windows installations on the computer, and one of them is working just fine. The other one, however, exhibits these hangs or freezes. It's also a new installation which is only a week or two old at most.

The issue is similar to this thread. It's also the exact same model, Dell XPS15 9550. The original hard drive has been swapped out for an SSD, Samsung 850 EVO 512 GB.

So I ran the tool in this thread to collect some info, attached below. I also ran HD Tune and posted the various results below. All green, as far as I understand. I've also run the driver verifier, although it yielded no BSODs. I let it run for a couple of hours, among which the hang/freeze occurred again and lasted throughout the night. Even after many hours in this state, the driver verifier produced no BSOD.

I have run chkdsk /r on all partitions and they have come out green, although I have no photos of that. I've also run Dell's hardware diagnostics in the BIOS, but again, they came out all green and I have no photo of it.

Finally, I also forced a crash in this hung/frozen state to produce a crash dump of the complete memory, so it's 20 GB in size, which is why I'm not sure I should share that. I don't know if another type of dump would be more helpful in diagnosing the error.

I would appreciate any and all help.

Hi Athena,

It sounds like you have complete dumps configured, which would account for the full 20GB being used. Unfortunately complete dumps are pretty inefficient if you weren't actually using all 20GB of your RAM at the time of the crash.

I would encourage you to switch to an "Active" dump if you are having to force blue screens during system hangs. Active dumps filter out all non-active pages when creating the dump file. This means that if you were say, only using 5GB of RAM, the dump file would be only 5GB (plus a tiny bit).

Like in the other thread, I will recommend you update to the latest firmware for your laptop. Even if this does not resolve your issue, it rules out an easy fix, and not to mention Dell support will demand you are fully up to date with firmware before they will assist you.

Dell XPS 15 9550 1.2.29 System BIOS Driver Details | Dell US

I am also a bit curious about the power settings you are using, perhaps they are causing an issue with the disk.

Could you send us the output of the following commands from an administrator PowerShell prompt?

The output files will be placed on your desktop.

Code:

powercfg.exe /systempowerreport /output "$home\Desktop\power-report.html"
powercfg.exe /energy /duration 30 /output "$home\Desktop\energy-report.html"
Get-Disk | Select FriendlyName, Model, IsBoot, AllocatedSize, HealthStatus, OperationalStatus, FirmwareVersion, PartitionStyle, Path | Format-List >> "$home\Desktop\disks.txt"

These were some of the "interesting" events I saw from your log. It appears something is going wonky in the I/O path for sure.

Code:

Event[6870]:
Log Name: System  
Source: Service Control Manager 
Date: 2017-08-19T18:35:08.901  
Event ID: 7023  
Task: N/A  
Level: Error  
Opcode: N/A  
Keyword: Classic  
User: N/A  
User Name: N/A  
Computer: PortableAthena  
Description: The Software Protection service terminated with the following error: The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable.

Code:

Event[6869]:  
Log Name: System  
Source: Ntfs 
Date: 2017-08-19T18:35:08.784 
Event ID: 55  
Task: N/A  
Level: Error  
Opcode: Info  
Keyword: N/A  
User: S-1-5-18  
User Name: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM  
Computer: PortableAthena 
 Description: A corruption was discovered in the file system structure on volume C:.The Master File Table (MFT) contains a corrupted file record.  The file reference number is 0x1000000000000.  The name of the file is "<unable to determine file name>".

Code:

Event[6868]:  
Log Name: 
System 
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Ntfs 
Date: 2017-08-19T18:35:08.784  
Event ID: 98  
Task: N/A  
Level: Error  
Opcode: Info 
Keyword: N/A  
User: S-1-5-18  
User Name: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM  
Computer: PortableAthena 
Description: Volume C: (\Device\HarddiskVolume4) needs to be taken offline to perform a Full Chkdsk.  Please run "CHKDSK /F" locally via the command line, or run "REPAIR-VOLUME <drive:>" locally or remotely via PowerShell.

I didn't really know what option to select when select which type of dump to write on crash. Since I was using it to forcefully crash Windows when the freeze/hang happens, I would need the complete state of the system to even begin debugging. Normally, I'd go with automatic or Kernel dump.

As for firemware, I have updated to the latest BIOS and Drivers using Dell's update utility.

As for the power settings, I use the default High Power with no modifications, or at least I am right now. But maybe something has messed with the settings? Since this is Windows, there's no way to be sure, after all. I've attached the power info.

Also, as for the events that seems to indicate disk corruption, they may have been caused by consistent hangs. The only ways out of those have been to force a BSOD or force power down the laptop, after all. I have run some chkdsk to fix those errors, however, and I did not check just now with chkdsk /f on both partitions to see if there were any errors left. There were none.

Looking at the disks.txt file, however, it does make me wonder if not the cache disk is causing problems. I don't use it, and on the other installation of Windows, it does not show up if I run the same command as on the other. Could that be the problem? I'm not sure on how to disable that.

You can certainly try disabling the small ssd in device manager and rebooting.

What method are you using for the manually initiated crash (see windows error report)?
Please post the latest chkdsk report: Read Chkdsk Log in Event Viewer in Windows 10 Windows 10 Performance Maintenance Tutorials
And please run overnight another test:
Open administrative command prompt and type: chkdsk /x /f /r

In the left lower corner search type system > open system control panel > in the left pane click advanced system settings > click start and recovery settings > post an image into the thread

Code:

2017-08-19 16:34    Windows Error Reporting    Fault bucket MANUALLY_INITIATED_CRASH, type 0
Event Name: BlueScreen
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 003beb01-1e8d-4e8c-a553-e6a1c0f8216e

Problem signature:
P1: e2
P2: 0
P3: 0
P4: 0
P5: 0
P6: 10_0_15063
P7: 0_0
P8: 256_1
P9: 
P10: 

Attached files:
\\?\C:\Windows\Minidump\081917-10406-01.dmp
\\?\C:\Windows\Temp\WER-11921-0.sysdata.xml
\\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WER3A1C.tmp.WERInternalMetadata.xml
\\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WER3A1D.tmp.csv
\\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WER3A2D.tmp.txt

These files may be available here:
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportArchive\Kernel_e2_1308bfd8d9bab3d6fa02acd5752933679f0_00000000_cab_112877a1

Analysis symbol: 
Rechecking for solution: 0
Report Id: 099855f9-696f-418a-8366-d296872d87a4
Report Status: 268435456
Hashed bucket:

Code:

Event[7250]:  Log Name: System
  Source: volmgr
  Date: 2017-08-20T14:18:42.344
  Event ID: 49
  Task: N/A
  Level: Error
  Opcode: N/A
  Keyword: Classic
  User: N/A
  User Name: N/A
  Computer: PortableAthena
  Description: 
Configuring the Page file for crash dump failed. Make sure there is a page file on the boot partition and that is large enough to contain all physical memory.

I use the keyboard shortcuts Right Ctrl + Scroll Lock, Scroll Lock to initiate a crash.

I'm going to try disabling the disk drive and letting the system run over over night. If it still freezes/hangs, I'll do another chkdsk and post the log here.

1) open administrative command prompt and type or copy and paste these commands:
2) sfc /scannow
3) dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth

When these have completed > right click on the top bar or title bar of the administrative command prompt box > left click on edit then select all > right click on the top bar again > left click on edit then copy > paste into the thread

4) msconfig (in the pop up system configuration > move the dot from normal startup to selective startup > uncheck load startup items > click service tab > in left lower corner check hide all Microsoft services > in the lower right side click disable all > click apply or ok > do not reboot)

5) taskmgr (in the pop up task manager > click on the start up tab > click on status so that the column sorts with enable rising to the top > right click on each row with enable and change to disable)

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...oot-in-windows

How to perform a Clean Boot in Windows 10 - TechNet Articles - United States (English) - TechNet Wiki

6) shutdown /r (you will reboot the computer so that it is in clean boot)

7) Evaluate the performance on your computer in clean boot during typical use.
a) Are the boots faster or slower?
b) Are the shutdowns faster or slower?
c) How has the audio and video performance changed? Is it better, worse, or the same?
d) How has the disk activity changed? Is it better, worse, or the same?
Continue using clean boot indefinitely to monitor performance.

8) The latest chkdsk resuts should be available within event.vwr:
Read Chkdsk Log in Event Viewer in Windows 10 Windows 10 Performance Maintenance Tutorials

The RAM on the computer is 20 GB.
There were multiple event log entries:

Code:

Configuring the Page file for crash dump failed. Make sure there is a page file on the boot partition and that is large enough to contain all physical memory.

9) Please post an image of the page file size with the startup and recovery settings.

Problem signature:P1: RAVBg64.exe

Code:

+++ WER4 +++:Fault bucket 120542109048, type 4Event Name: APPCRASHResponse: Not availableCab Id: 0Problem signature:P1: RAVBg64.exeP2: 1.0.0.247P3: 57ba932fP4: RAVBg64.exeP5: 1.0.0.247P6: 57ba932fP7: c0000005P8: 0000000000031692P9: P10: +++ WER5 +++:Fault bucket 120542109048, type 4Event Name: APPCRASHResponse: Not availableCab Id: 0Problem signature:P1: RAVBg64.exeP2: 1.0.0.247P3: 57ba932fP4: RAVBg64.exeP5: 1.0.0.247P6: 57ba932fP7: c0000005P8: 0000000000031692P9: P10: +++ WER6 +++:Fault bucket 120542109048, type 4Event Name: APPCRASHResponse: Not availableCab Id: 0Problem signature:P1: RAVBg64.exeP2: 1.0.0.247P3: 57ba932fP4: RAVBg64.exeP5: 1.0.0.247P6: 57ba932fP7: c0000005P8: 0000000000031692P9: P10:

10) Open control panel > large or small icons > troubleshooting > view all > run these troubleshooters:
a) hardware and devices
b) paying audio
c) recording audio
d) video playback
For anything that was fixed or was not able to be fixed please post images into the thread.

Will do this tomorrow, but a note regarding the page file, point #9. At multiple times during my troubleshooting, I had the page file size set to 16 MB, I think, which obviously was not enough to produce a working crash dump file, so that's probably where the log entry comes from. I was able to get a working crash dump file later (20 GB in size).

OK, so I rebooted into the other windows installation, disabled the cache disk, enabled all other startup programs and services and rebooted. When logging back into the system after reboot, the problem reappeared after minutes, do that did not work.

I ran sfc on the windows drive from the working windows installation. No violations found, see attached pictures. The problem is that I can't really do much work in the other windows installation that's going to take some time as when/if Windows hangs/freezes, that operation is going to be hung too. Not sure how to execute dism from another windows installation, if at all possible.

So going to do a chkdsk tonight and work on the rest tomorrow.