XPS 8940, constant crashes

I am having the same issue. At varying times the system just locks up. Cursor freezes and only recourse is to power down the system. Thought it might be related to Nvidia multi-monitor but updated all drivers and ran support assist to no avail. Crashes using single or dual monitors. I do have windows 11 installed and have had it installed for well over 1 year with no issues but suspect this problem may have been introduced with latest Windows 11 update. 

I have tried  everything I can think off. I have been a it tech for 30 years, and still stumped. Just installed an older drive with the original system, will see if it is sw or not.

I have windows 11, latest updates loade for everything, minimal startup

Good to know. We have 2 tech savvy users with same issue. Hopefully we'll hear from others as well. 

No hardware or BIOS changes here except updates provided by Dell. I'll try your suggestion. I have tried a clean install from Nvidia but that did not work. 

I have done as you suggested. Crossing fingers and hoping it will not lock up again.

This happened both with nvidia 1060 installed and without it. Eventually I changed to a  radeon 5700, but still crashes. If I it were clients pc, I would have changed PSU/mb. 

As you pointed out, there are number of people with this issue. I did go through the links and tried all solutions I could find. I have the original drive in now and will see if problems re-occur. If they do , it really points to a hw isssue.

@epauls​ 

If you scanned this forum, both AMD and NVIDIA cards have problems, NVIDIA more as it is with almost every BIOS released. AMD, only 2 or 3 BIOS updates caused problems, and they were in a few cases remedied with a fast new BIOS release.

Also, on W11, AMD's Utility is causing some problems.

Not knowing what your problem actually is and/or what you tried to alleviate the problem, it is hard to tell which 'type' you have.

@ispalten​ I have Radeon 5700, but the freeze occurs with out an add on video card. The problem is simple, PC just hangs - no kbr or mouse input, clock stops. Only way to get past it is a hard boot.  Event viewer does not show anything event errors during the hang.

I have tried downgrading BIOS to 2.13, 2.14-  no change, change RAM, remove video card, remove most items from startup

@epauls​ 

@ispalten​ I have Radeon 5700, but the freeze occurs with out an add on video card. The problem is simple, PC just hangs - no kbr or mouse input, clock stops. Only way to get past it is a hard boot.  Event viewer does not show anything event errors during the hang.

That is the 'classic' problem. No indication of the cause.

I have never seen a report of this without a discrete add-on video card installed though?

To me, this would indicate something else than the 'BIOS' problem?

I'd be thinking 'heat' or 'RAM' issues?

Have you opened the case and checked for some 'loose' connections? Reseat the RAM? Clear out any dust? Check fans for running?

Have you tried booting into F12 and run the Dell Diagnostics?

@ispalten​ I removed 2 sticks of ram, still hangs. switched with other ram, no change. Fans and temperature is fine, if I reboot when it hangs, it restarts with no issues. Ran 5 hrs memtest 86, no errors. Dell diags does not find any problems.  I have been a IT tech since pc's came out, and I am stumped

ispalten

Thanks, your solution seems to have worked for me. No hang ups in the past 24 hours.

Honestly, I took out the Dell GPU and replaced it with a PNY RTX 4070, and have not had an issue since. I can update the firmware to the latest versions and use any Nvidia driver.  It has to be a combination of the Dell GPU and the firmware that is just not liked. 

(Note: I did buy the GPU's directly from the DELL). 

It is tested and working without errors. 
PNY GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16G VERTO Dual Fan - Graphics card - GeForce RTX 4060 Ti - 16 GB GDDR6 - PCIe 4.0 x16 - HDMI, 3 x DisplayPort | Dell USA

Tested and works without errors. 

PNY GeForce RTX 4070 12GB Verto Dual Fan Graphics card | Dell USA

On average, the RTX 1060 TI pulled about 150 out of the total 160TDP.

The RTX 4070 Pulled about 185-190 out of the total 200 Watts TDP on average.

(The 4070 GPU has the same Total 200-watt TDP as an XPS 8940 configured with an RTX 3060 TI.) 

               Note: if changing from the RTX 3070 you save 20 watts of the PSU, but average 20-30 Watts total as the PNY cards draw slightly less power. 

as an update, the PNY RTX 4070 Super will  work in the 8940 with 1 adapter.  you will need one 6 to 8 pin adapter. since the secondary pinout doesn't have the extra 2 pins for sense.   it has the same 220 watt TDP  as the Dell shipped RTX 3070 .

Just remember get the 2 fan version and or I think the blower version is the same size as the 2 fan .

@epauls​ Me too (Tech since 1988 and Dell Certified) 

Finally found a solution that works for me. After losing data, having to replace two drives from constant crashing this is what I did. The main thing that worked was searching for intel storage and disabling the "Link Power Management" on the "Intel Optane Memory and Storage Management" program. After disabling this I've had about two weeks runtime with a days of uptime. Before I was getting up two 10 crashes a day and sometimes it would even go a day and a half. It was completely random. I thought it was the network killer app because that was also crashing a lot according to my crash report. Also I recommend going to intel's site and dell's update page for this pc to update your drivers. For some reason these updates don't show up on windows update, dell update app you might will say critical.  After making sure all your drivers are complete. Before this, I did a full clean install, a refresh and a few reverts but this power configuration thing seems to work the best for me. Now I just have some small issues I usually fix with a restart. I Hope this works, I was searching all over for this. Online I saw that windows 10 and 11 has issue with power saving things, I looked into the dell bios and saw nothing much as far as power saving so I search and figured this must be the next best thing. Turned it off and haven't had a crash in about a month now. Hope this helps as this was extremely frustrating. Especially losing data and my online backups where interrupted thanks to the crashing.

Hope this works for you...