XPS 15 9550 Freeze randomly - Black screen

So I think I've traced this down to the core main system BIOS (not be confused with the BIOS in several components). The A05 System BIOS was causing my problems and the crashes resulted in Windows corruption as well. I've since downgraded to v1.1.15 and reinstalled Windows (and my apps) and things are now stable. I do have the TB15 dock and had to have it connected to keep the Thunderbolt drivers installed during the downgrade (when I tried it with it unplugged, it removed those from the BIOS!).

We'll see if the stability continues. I've lost many hours of my life fighting this and am not a happy customer. I now need to reevaluate whether to continue my organization's standardization on Dell (this is the second critical testing failure of this sort on XPS models in 6 months).

Fix process: Install 1.1.15 BIOS - Install Windows (I kept user settings) - Install apps

I can tell BIOS 1.1.19 isn't cause for my issue.. It happens the first day I got the laptop (early Jan.2016), upgrading to 1.1.19 does not change anything.

Replacing the motherboard (as well as my LCD screen) fixed my issue - I'm running 1.1.19 with no problem for a entire week now.

We should file a class action law suit against dell.

We definitely should.. If anyone can help..

Well, apparently replacing the motherboard and the LCD isn't the end of story for me:

- Dell scratched my laptop while replace the motherboard, so they have to replace the covers for me.
- Bought a dell docking station with USB-C, apparently it doesnt work with XPS15 - the fan will go crazy after connecting to it. It's returned. but this is definitely a problem with the laptop, not the dock.
- Now the space bar on the laptop is not registering (30%) of the time during normal typing. I will have to send in my laptop again to replace the keyboard.. Pretty sure something else will be broken after the repair..

I haven't been able to use this laptop since I bought in late Dec. everytime I sent it in for repair, I have to swipe out the system... I'm not done with Dell yet.. 

Hey everyone, new bios release today:

Please reply to my reddit post if the new bios fixed your 960m black screen issue ?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/4egck1/xps_15_9550_new_bios_released_010200/d1zw4yp

If we all report this issue as still being persistent then we can move forward with a major communiqué to Dell Support of this ongoing major issue and why it wasn't a focus in the new Bios fix.

Apart from wasting my time on Dell I resorted to reverting back to BIOS 1.1.15 and it seems to have done the trick for me. No black screens for a week now.

Having said that I hope I haven't just invoked some variant of Murphy's Law ...

Seems to be fixed sort of , just tested it now with a quick game + closing it after sometime (this usually resulted in a crash to black screeen previosly) however now it dosent

After my last post on the thread (different thread actually, same issue, computer actually stopped black and blue-screening after a MB replace and 8+ hours of working on it), the computer started doing slow-motion crashes (eventually stopped accepting user input but still showing the screen) instead of black and blue screens.  Those were happening every 5-10 minutes (I now hit - constantly as a nervous habit.)

With the new (2016-04-12) BIOS I've only had it crash once on the first reboot after the update.  At this point I think I have over a four hour uptime!  It's an improvement.

12 hour constant uptime with heavy use no black screens whatsoever i think this updated fixed it :) , after all it was a driver issue glad i didn't have to send it to dell to get motherboard replaced like they suggested.

after 4 full months of fixing, dell is doing a refund - definitely it has ruined this brand.. NO Dell for our company in the next 5 years. 

so is it only with a MB replacement you can get this fixed? or is it a drivers issue?

Last thing i tried was the new BIOS release 01.02.00, and also switching to Nvidia card fulltime and reinstalling its driver from Dell support. and i managed to reduce the BSOD freezes to once a day or so...and it looks like they come when i do more intensive tasks like playin a game. 

I get CRITICAL PROCESS DIED Kernel-PnP event id 219 The driver \Driver\WUDFRd failed to load for the device ACPI\INT3400\2&daba3ff&1.

used to always get data inpage errors a while back.

some people say to install SAMSUNG NVME DRIVER...not sure if those guys get the same errors as me in the event viewer. .

Motherboard replaced on mine and still have a problem. I seem to crash even more - struggling to even write this post. I used to get a black screen but now I get a blue screen with CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED.

Going to ask for my money back.

Hi,

I received my DELL XPS 15 9550 on the half of April 2016 and my trouble begin...

I'm running Windows 10 Pro, and my computer crash at lest one or two time by day. One day, in 12 hours working, my computer crash 5 time ! An other example, during a Skype meeting, my computer crash 2 time.

All the crash are similar and finish by a BLUE SCREEN CRASH (generally CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED).

Bellow is a "crash case" :

Using my DELL XSP 15 9550 with Word, FireFox and Outlook can cause a BLUE SCREEN CRASH (CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED).

- 1st trouble: Outlook does not really fluent (this prevent that the computer will Crash with the “CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED” blue screen error.
- 2nd trouble: Outlook does not respond (video time: 0 min 15 sec), I can’t move the Word window.
- 3rd trouble: Outlook Crash (video time: 0 min 25 sec), The current window was closed without asking the save the file or prevent closing.
- 4th trouble: When I try to open a Word document, Word doesn’t respond…
- 5th trouble: Pressing CTRL + ALT + SUPP have no effect (video time 1 min 03)
- 6th trouble: When I try to open another Word document, I have a black screen (video time 1 min 13)
- 7th trouble: After few second, I got the blue screen with the CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED error code (always the same) (video time 1 min 30).

I spend many time with DELL technical support, try many solution, update all driver, windows and BIOS, but I always got an UNUSABLE and UNSTABLE computer :(

My computer don't crash only on Windows. I try to test the memory using the famous MemTest 86 6.3.0 don't the computer always crash (random) during the test without showing memory error. You can view my test on YouTube :

Have you similar trouble ?

Mine freezes or the screen scrambles (and freezes) if its bumped ever so slightly.  The fix is to hold down the power button for 10 seconds to force it off, then turn it on again.  Its so annoying, Im going to try dell support and see if I can get it replaced.

Hi, I found this thread while trying to fix a similar problem I had with my XPS 15 9550. On random occasions, often right after boot, it would be stuck in loop in which it would freeze for a few seconds, then have a short blackscreen, work for 2 seconds only to freeze again.

I tried the fixes that were suggested here, like downgrading the BIOS and reinstalling the NVIDA drivers - nothing worked.

Here is what worked for me:

After a few days I noticed that in between the black screens the color of the display would slightly change, wich led me to the preinstalled tool "Dell Premier Color". I quickly closed it from the task bar within two freezes and it actually stopped it! I continued to uninstall it completely and I haven't had a problem since, even with the latest BIOS installed.

I hope that helps somebody.