XPS 8940 Freezing - No Help from Dell

Your symptoms don't sound like most of the ones reported for XPS 8940.  Most of them are hard freezes, especially when waking from sleep.

Exactly what does PC do when it "won't stay on"? Freezes, shuts off completely, reboots itself, or...? And what happens if you try to power back on? Does it power on and boot to desktop immediately or do you have to try multiple times over several minutes to get it to boot?

First, reboot PC and tap F12 when you see the Dell screen.  Selection option to run Diagnostics and run all of them, including all fan tests.  This can take several hours so be patient. Look at the diagnostics Results tab for possible failures...

If no hardware failures reported, or if it shuts off while running diagnostics, reboot and open Windows Event Viewer.  Look for error message(s) at the time of the previous crash (the one during diagnostics won't be reported). You can ignore Kernel 41 errors which just mean Windows wasn't shut down properly.  Are there any "thermal events", possibly because the CPU (or GPU) overheated and shut PC off to protect itself?

Also make sure all fans are clean, turn freely and working when PC is powered on (CPU fan, case fan, GPU fan).

It's possible the CPU (or GPU) is overheating and you may need to remove CPU fan and heat sink, (Don't remove CPU from its slot), clean top of CPU and bottom of heat sink and apply fresh thermal paste. Check Service Manual for details about removing/installing parts and lots of youtubes about applying fresh thermal paste between CPU and heat sink.

Thanks for the reply! 

The CPU freezes, I get a blue screen that says 'Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart" 

This occurs every 10-15 minutes, even after a fresh factory reset with no work being performed on the computer. 

I ran hardware test through Dell and it said "we didn't detect and hardware issues" 

I ran the pre-boot system performance check and it came back clear as well. 

When I ran the dianogistics through the Dell website it came back with two failures under: 

Hardware Name: MF220 Series. 

Category: PCI 

and 

Hardware Name: usbStatus

Category: USB Status 

No recent changes made to the desktop before these errors started. 

I will go through your suggestions when I receive the desktop back - if this new information helps to narrow down the problem even more please let me know! 

Thanks! 

@DS2024​ 

I am wondering if this is an A/C power issue or even the PSU?

Are you on a UPS or Surge Protector for power? If so, don't use it and see what happened. It is possible a spike or drop could cause a h/w part to stop? Unlikely but a reasonable easy test if you are connected to the power via these.

Any external h/w connected to the PC? Disconnect those and test.

Quite possible though the CPU is the problem as that seems to be what Dell Support suspects?

Of course, other reasons could be heat that slows down the CPU, but unlikely that it would cause the error.

Do you have a discrete video card? If so, remove it and use the video port on the back row of connectors. See what happens.... video card could be going bad or having a heat problem.

That "MF220 Series" probably would be for a Canon Printer but I'd not expect Dell tests to report an error with it? Possible I guess as it goes down the PCI bus and knows the printer is attached but it was powered off? USB one could be the same, attached device was off or didn't respond?

Nothing connected to this desktop aside from the mouse/keyboard that came with the computer. Powered directly to the wall, no changes made there over the last 2 years. 

Here is exactly what happens - now within five minutes of computer start up: 

1 - Screen freezes. Can still move mouse around. 

2 - Stays in this position for almost 5 minutes before the blue screen comes up which says: Critical_Process_Died 

Thanks for the replies! 

@DS2024​ 

In searching that specific error there are some links to it...

One suggests this:

-----------

Corrupt system files: These are best addressed using the DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth command (run at an administrative command prompt or in an administrative PowerShell session). If this command finds anything to report, run DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth to clean things up. Next, run the system file checker until it reports nothing found or fixed (this sometimes takes 2 or 3 iterations): SFC /SCANNOW. If it works, this will often fix the BSOD error as well.

-----------

Even MS's page sends you to the one I got the above from, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1341083/stop-code-critical-process-died so look at this one as well.

Another MS page to look at, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1391456/critical-process-died-blue-screen-need-help

The program, Blue Screen View (https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html) will show you the trail of files and the first one or two will have the name of the driver/file that caused the message to appear. With THAT you can determine which h/w is causing the problem.

You can also get WinDbg (https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9pgjgd53tn86?hl=en-US&gl=US) and install it on your PC. Then open a CMD prompt and at the C: drive. Then enter 'DIR *.dmp /S /P" and it will list all the DUMP files and timestamps. Find on that is the latest that corresponds the fail you had.

Both of these require a .DMP file to be written. Generally these will be in the C: at "\Users\Your_UserID\AppData\Local\CrashDumps"  where "Your_UserID" is you MS Windows name.

Still another line to review on the ways to read a file there, https://www.wikihow.com/Read-Dump-Files and once you know the name of the file causing the problem it makes it easier to try and determine why.

When you get PC back, install a fresh CR2032 coin cell battery on motherboard before doing any testing, if nothing else than to rule that battery out..

Did you run Windows Update to get all the latest OS updates? And did you install all the drivers after the "fresh factory reset"? 

Go the Support home page, and enter your Service Tag (don't post it here).  It will show you the latest drivers and BIOS available for your specific hardware.  Make sure all of them are installed, including Intel Chipset which is typically listed as a "Utility" on the support site, rather than as a "Driver". 

Open Event Viewer and see if you can find an entry that corresponds to one of those Critical_Process_Died BSOD for more details. You can also use WhoCrashed (free) to see what it can tell you about a crash.

Thermal issues probably won't show up in the Diagnostics, but Thermal Events can -but not always- be logged in Event Viewer.