XPS 8940, randomly freezes or locks up

Question

Hi,

I am a novice user and have been following several threads regarding the random lock or freeze of the XPS 8940 requiring a hard reboot. I have been experiencing this problem since I received the machine. However, out of frustration over a week ago I decided to move my daily sessions to my other non-Dell desktop. I have no idea if the following info will shed any light on the problem but I find it interesting. In moving back to my second non-Dell desktop I swapped keyboards between machines. Both machines are still running. The interesting thing is that I have continued to use the XPS 8940 and since swapping keyboards I have not experienced a single lock up or freeze. It has been over a week now. For what it may be worth I was using a Logitech Model Name Y-UV95 keyboard with lighted keys. I switched back to the original Dell keyboard supplied with the XPS 8940. I had never used the Dell keyboard before with the XPS 8940 but with my non-Dell desktop. I claim no computer expertise but offer this information to the gurus. I have no idea if this info has anything to do with the problem. All I can say is since switching out the keyboard I have not had any lock ups or freezes. One other bit of info is that I quit putting the XPS 8940 in suspend mode because it would lock up almost every session. But since swapping keyboards I have not had a single freeze in putting the machine in suspend mode.

RoHe · Answer

Interesting observation...

Exactly which GPU (NVidia or AMD) is installed?

Is XPS 8940 set not to allow PC to turn off USB and Human Interface Devices (HID) for all USB and HID Devices that have a Power Management tab in Device Manager?

Is Windows Power plan set to "Best Performance" and are USB Selective Suspend, Hybrid Sleep and PCI-Express Link State set to disabled, all on the Advanced screen for the active Windows Power plan?

Daniel Henault · Answer

Hello Ron, i

As i have the same issue with my XPS 8940 freezing randomly. I just changed the power settings like you said (it was set to balanced) and i also removed the USB key and uninstalled drivers of a Logitech wireless keyboard i was using on this computer. We'll see if that works!

Lopito Abad · Answer

Having the same problem here. Running Win 11 Home fully updated. I have swapped keyboard and mouse but it did not help.

Dell XPS 8940
BIOS 2.16.0

32GB RAM
Intel 11th Generation I&-11700 @2.5GHz
Intel UHD Graphics 750
NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 TI

RoHe · Answer

@Lopito Abad  - Did you change all the  power plan settings I mentioned above? Which version of NVidia driver are you using (look in Device Manager)? Did you open NVidia Control Panel and change the 'Manage 3D Settings' power option to 'prefer max performance'?Have you looked in Windows Event Viewer for error messages around the time it crashes?

Lopito Abad · Answer

@RoHe​ I have been monitoring the recommendations regarding this issue for about a month now. And YES, I have tried everything and nothing helped. Yesterday, I installed the driver direct from NVIDIA (31.0.15.5123) and so far, no problem since yesterday.

kstar42 · Answer

I've tried everything - reverted to original BIOS, unplugged all USB devices, tried new mouse/keyboard on different USB ports (front/back), Windows 10, Windows 11, and Ubuntu/Linux Mint - all OS's will freeze. The only thing that keeps it from freezing both in Windows and Linux is to set the BIOS to the Intel integrated graphics. I have a GeForce GTX 1650 installed but not being used...

reeve11 · Answer

I think I found the solution to this problem. I've been fighting this for about a year and a half now!

I purchased my XPS 8940 with Nvidia 1600 SUPER graphics card and received it Nov. 2022, It came with Windows 11 installed and I immediately downgraded to Windows 10. At first, the lockups were only about 1 per month. I've only had 2 BIOS upgrades since, the last one about 2 months ago, but the problem became noticeably much worse with each upgrade. I leave my computer on 24/7 and, since the last upgrade, I would find the PC was getting daily lockups/freezes every morning when I woke. It would be rare to have a morning without a lockup. The only way to recover from them has always been a hard reset.

After this last BIOS upgrade, I researched this problem more extensively and found an article that said you should not get your driver updates from anyone except your PC manufacturer, such as DELL. It said that companies like DELL will sometimes have their own hardware/license codes for 3rd party OEM equipment and an upgrade from the OEM manufacturer (like NVidia) may not be compatible with your PC and BIOS. I had been getting my updates from both DELL and NVidia, as NVidia's drivers were always much more current.

So, I decided to download the DDU driver uninstall program ver. 18.0.7.4 https://www.wagnardsoft.com/display-driver-uninstaller-DDU- and uninstalled the old NVidia drivers and installed a clean copy of the latest driver from the DELL website. Since doing this, I've gone from having daily lockups every morning, sometimes twice a day, to not having a lockup for the past 5 days.

When Running DDU, it's recommended to have the PC in Safe Mode (without Networking or Command Line). You also need to download the DELL Driver and have it ready to install, then disable your network so the PC doesn't auto-update while the Driver is removed. Inside the DDU program, you can click on the top right drop down box to select GPU, and then click to uninstall the drivers at the bottom right of the screen. it will remove the Video and Audio drivers in less than a minute and you can see the progress. Then, update with the DELL latest version of the NVidia driver/software and reboot normally.

I hope this helps you all like it did me. DELL's support has proven to be pathetic and not worth the cost or aggravation they typically cause consumers. All they can do is to go through the same sheet of "Try This" options, have you doing numerous unrelated reinstalls and resetting things, and then they don't know what to do. If they are using special hardware and licensing codes in their systems, this should be an obvious solution and their DELL technicians should already be made aware of this and have a solution available. I think I'm done again! They can have their messed up SupportAssist, too!

subculture27 · Answer

I had same issues, tried everything (including wasting $$ sending to Dell for assessment) and then replaced the stock fan with $20 replacement from Canada Computers, it has fixed everything.  Do this FIRST before anything else.  This also fixed my G5000 that had sporadic issues.

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XPS 8940, randomly freezes or locks up

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