DAY 2: Inspiron XPS Lockup Issue - Page 6

Good luck, Karl!

No good. After the GPU was swapped out, I got another hard lockup after 28min 44sec. I'm going to call Dell Tech Support now to see what the next step should be.

Edit:

The lockup was in Midnight Club II only. I haven't experienced any lockups in other games and I'm still testing. Looks like things might be resolved from the GPU swapout after all.

hmm interesting.. Maybe all the ATI's cards are defective?? if not all I'm guessing a good 90% from the likes of it. Sorry to hear about it Static

Awesome

"It seems that Dell stressed for a higher quality part that can clock higher than everyone else's,"

Clocked to Dell's default of 445.50/263.25 I assume you mean.

The funny thing is, that Adam overclocked the 9700 in his Sager 8790 to 500/300 (heck, he even pushed it to 515/300 and broke 4000 in 3DMark03) and it's rock-solid stable in a 75 degree room sitting on a flat surface with no additional cooling. :


"Played UT2K4 demo with the 500/300 settings for over 2 hours and no artifacts, freezups, lockups, or any problems. Bumping it up a little bit to see if it will reach 4,000 in 3DMARK03.

EDIT
4,000 reached no problem."


Which implies there is some other issue, perhaps a really bad batch of gpus, not even up to normal standards?

While getting my time wasted by the regular dell call center, I remembered one of the key features of the XPS being the following:

"Dedicated Tech Support Phone Queue: Specially trained reps who know the latest games and the latest technology are available at dedicated XPS support call-in number to help XPS customers."

I asked the agent to transfer me to that department, and I've been on hold in their queue for about 20 minutes now.

Nice...

Don't waste your time talking to anyone not in the U.S.

Here is what happened to me the first time i called for support on my XPS. I think i might have called the wrong number. BE SURE to call 1-800-WWW-DELL for support on your XPS. You will be put on hold for a while, but using this number i've actually reached guys in the XPS department twice.

The first time i called for XPS support though ( IT was using a diff. number posted on these forums) , i got put on with an indian or arab guy who said he was trained on the XPS, but he didn't know what 3dmark was, neither did his supervisor, which i asked to talk to immediately after that. I asked them where they were located, and they said Manilla, or Malaysia, i can't remember. Once he said, "Ok go ahead an turn off your computer, then..." I was like Oh for the love of god and i just hung up, and called the main phone number on the Dell website. Then i entered in that number on the bottom of the comp. and finally after talking to some non-XPS person, i actually reached someone in the XPS dept.

If you get someone in the XPS Dept, get his name and email! Knowing someone's name goes a LONG way in the end user world. Anyways, that's my two cents, i have to get back to work. My new XPS should be arriving this week i think, it's in production. Hopefully we'll all get good cards this time around (Karl, hammermd)..Sucks about LurkingJay - Sorry man..

Glad to hear that things are going smoothly for you now, Karl. I'll keep my fingers crossed that your machine will continue to be problem-free with many late nights of uninterrupted gaming ahead of you. We all really appreciate what you've done in providing insight & organization about this issue.

I'm speaking with XPS Support now and I've decided to go with a full system exchange. The tech said that this won't impact my CompleteCare coverage in any way, since that just covers replacing the system in the future when it's damaged.

He said my options were to wait a few days to see what the engineers can come up with, or to just go ahead and get the entire system exchanged now. They're shipping me the new one first, so won't have to be without a system for a few days. My old system isn't going through their normal returns department, instead it's going directly to the engineers so they can study it and figure out exactly what was causing the problem.

Thanks to Bryan and Sam in XPS Support for being very helpful and I should have a trouble-free system in 3-5 business days.

Oh, and just an FYI, even if you call the main Dell tech support number (800-624-9896), just enter "1" and then 66955, then enter your express service code to go directly to XPS support and bypass the main call centers.

I am so thankful that I haven't had to call for our "specialized" support. Why is there not a different number for the xps owners to use?

I'm on hold for the "manufacturing" dept to find out more details on what is causing the delay for my shipment, which was to be today. According to the first person it was due to the "battery" and my new estimated ship date was April 5th (another 2 weeks!)... I'll post here what I find out from the "manufacturing" department... fun fun!

Thanks for the phone number and code to get past main support--you must have been typing while I was asking the question. Hope your new xps is solid.

Well it turns out I'm actually talking to the "notification" dept and this guy claims that my system is "far" along in the process and should be moving to boxing in the next 48 hours... he claims it was a "processor" issue, but they got some in over the weekend and my system was lucky enough to receive one... He's trying to get more info right now from "manufacturing" about the actual progress on my system...

Yep, that's pretty much what I remember, with exception to taking the palmrest off as well, If you need directions, I can help.

Congrats on getting it working, you deserve after all of the work towards testing the issues.

I'm also beginning to question whether my new board really did solve the problem or not. So far I haven't experienced any corruption, and Midnight Club II was the only game that froze. I'm currently enjoying a nice deathmatch session in Call of Duty (full version) and it isn't freezing like it did previously. Maybe Midnight Club II just has as an issue with this card and it is an isolated case. I'm going to continue testing all my other games and I'll report back here.

I'm calling Dell now to put the new system swap on hold until I test for a little while longer.

You might also try uninstalling and reinstall Midnight Club II, then do the most recent patch. God only knows what the lockups did to the Midnight Club II program and data files.

Good idea. I'm still playing Call of Duty on a busy server with 23 other players. Been working smoothly now for about 45 minutes, whereas before it would lock up after about 10. Looks like I might be trouble-free after all.