XPS 8960, periodic blue screen shutdowns, useless support from Dell

In December (2024) I purchased a Dell XPS 8960 directly from Dell with an Intel Core i9-14900K processor.  Almost immediately I began to have blue screen shutdowns periodically, every 2 to 3 days.  For the most part these shutdowns occurred while I was away from my PC when the computer was essentially idle. I contacted Dell via chat, email and phone in January and worked with the technicians to see if the problem could be resolved.  Eventually, I thought it had been resolved but soon the blue screen crashes reemerged though generally only about once a week. I decided to just live with it at that level.

On June 11 I received an email from Dell titled “Customer Advisory Regarding Intel CPU Instability – BIOS Update.” The email noted that there may be some problems with my processor causing instability and that I should update to a new BIOS – 2.17.0.  I thought great, now I could finally get rid of this problem by updating the BIOS so I did so.  However, the periodic crashes continued, and I decided to reinstitute my support request to (hopefully) get to the bottom of this.

On June 12 I started a chat and via email over the next several days worked to resolve the problem. If the problem persisted, I was told to call a particular phone number to contact the experts rather than the general support people. Notably I was told that the new support personnel would have access to the things that had been done before so that they could immediately begin working on the problem.

On June 16 having had more crashes I called Dell and some additional work was done and again I was told to recontact Dell if there were more crashes.

I had been sent an email on June 16 and replied on June 19 that the crashes continued. And this is where the frustration with Dell support really begins to become a problem.

My response had been directed to the person I had been working with who I will call Dell1. I received a response not from Dell1 but rather from someone who I will call Dell2. That response said to upgrade the Bios to 2.17.0 which I had done the week before. I told Dell2 that and pointed out that he should have the information regarding this situation since this is a ticket that had been opened for a time.

Dell2 replied to say that I should look for a minidump file that could be found at C:\Windows\Minidump. I replied that there was no such file. Dell2 replied with a method to create a mini-dump file. The essential part of that message was to open the task manager and “locate the specific process you wish to create a dump for.” My reply was to ask what process do you want me to create the dump for? Dell2 responded merely by repeating the message he had sent previously for how to create a dump file. I again responded by asking him what specific process did he want me to create the dump file. His response was (for the third time) to simply repeat what he had said before.

Frustrated with this response, I decided to call Dell support. I spoke to Dell3 and explained what was going on and Dell3 had me send one of the emails from Dell2 which I did. While Dell 3 did not directly respond to my question about the process, Dell3 did work to try to solve the situation and even involved another person (Dell4) who I think was at a more advanced level. After about an hour or so, I had to stop this phone call.

I then sent an email back to Dell3 when I was able to resume work on this. Instead of getting a response from Dell3, I next received a response from Dell2 which told me to find the minidump file at C:\Windows\Minidump. I again replied to Dell2 that no such file existed. Dell2 replied to update the BIOS to 2.17.0. I of course responded that not only had I already done so but that I had already told him that previously. Dell2 responded by asking whether I was still experiencing blue screen shutdowns. I responded to say yes, that I had 4 crashes the past week and urged him to escalate this to an expert person since he seemed not to be able to address the issue himself.  Three days later I am waiting for a response.

I realize this may be a difficult problem to solve, however the support I have received (notably from Dell2) is inexcusable. Not only did Dell2 not seem to know what had been going on in this problem but repeatedly asked for things that he had already asked for and should well have known the answers to.

Any thoughts on how to try to resolve this situation would be appreciated.