Anyone else finds Windows 10 to be buggy on Precision 7510?

Getting a bit frustrated with Win 10 on my Xeon E3-1575M with AMD W5170. I don't do any graphics work, my only need for the machine was for the ECC memory (I run a big fat ERP SQL package on it).

Anyway, things I have noticed over the last few weeks:

- Numerous crashes/restarts of Windows Explorer. Totally random and highly disruptive. Laptop restarts help.
- As a result of the above, search Windows function is intermittent. Highly annoying.
- Can only work with switchable graphics turned off. Otherwise I see all sorts of weird desktop behaviour with AMD graphics card driver crashing.
- Forget about connecting an external monitor (Dell as well) to a display port. Windows Explorer/Graphics card can't handle it. All of the above behaviour, times 10. Found a work around. Have to restart the laptop 2-3 times in a row in order for it to work stable.
- Disconnect the monitor at the end of the work day, go home, start the laptop again (no monitor at home) - same behaviour. 2 restarts and it goes back to normal mode. Kind of needs restarts to get used to the idea it has or hasn't got the monitor attached to it.
- Lately, it fails to start. Won't go past the Dell icon. Upon hard reset it starts the Windows up and AMD driver reports the settings have been reset to their defaults after a fatal crash.

The laptop has 16GB of Dell ECC memory. I've put a 1TB intel PCI-e drive in it which is where OS is installed.

I'm a system admin in the past and know my hardware quite well (servers mostly and command line). I'm ready to switch to Linux (which I hate with passion) or Windows 7. Only installed 10 to future proof the ERP package and run a XP in Hyper-V. I ran Macs for the past 12 years and if the goodam Apple didn't botch their latest Macbook I'd never get myself involved with Windows as my main OS again but it's too late now so have to do best with what I have.

A bit of a rant really as I will have to find the time and install the 7 or if the reports are positive may switch to Linux and run ERP in Xen/KVM.

Thanks for your time reading this.

 

All latest drivers/BIOS before anyone asks. Tried various combinations of graphics drivers both Dell and independent issued with no much luck.

 

7510 with Windows 10 here. It gets heavy use and I have none of the issues that you mention with regards to Windows Explorer, graphics, or external displays. I do have NVIDIA graphics and not AMD (always regretted it when I choose them for graphics in the past).

[Edit] Not sure if it makes any difference, but I do not have Hyper-V installed either. (I have to go out of my way to avoid installing it, Visual Studio really likes to tick it on by default.) I know if you install it, it actually runs your host OS in the hypervisor as well, which could perhaps cause some strange issues? I use VMware Workstation instead, if only because I've been using it for over 10 years and am most comfortable with it out of all of the VM solutions that I have tried.

 

That is a myriad of problems.

I have vmware workstation on our precisions running win10 hosts with guest Win/Linux dev environments, but they also make vmware for Linux hosts if you went that route. I use Vmware Workstation on Linux host servers (not speaking of my precision at the moment) running multiple large MS Win Servers / SQL Servers as guests and other large guest VMs running RHEL with Oracle databases and Oracle Apps/EBS. Very pleased with vmware. Okay, enough of my sales pitching for vmware.

I don't know the source of the problems as you have alot going on. You could try a few things... Fresh Win install or Try a Linux host setup. Put the Sql Server and ERP environments in guest virtual machines. I always run such [oracle linux with DB/APPs or ms Win Serv with SQL server database] in a guest vm to keep my host simple without all the heavy clutter of those systems. Your VMs will be powered by the virtual graphics adapter etc. Keeping your host much easier to maintain and simplified. At the most I have in my host is the the SSMS and Visual Studio or Oracle Client tools which then connect me to access and develop the database and applications servers running in those VMs. But even those tools I also keep and prefer to use from inside yet another separate VM.

In other words, you may need to compartmentalize the database and ERP environments into virtual machines rather than have them running straight out of your host laptop. It keeps me sane doing it that way.

 

Just checking in with the 7710 (6920, M3000m, 4K, 1.9.5) and can reiterate some of these issues. Windows explorer being unstable, and weird things with hibernation and office. Word and Outlook will crash when launched or specific features are used following resume from hibernate. Machine also can't go to display sleep with switchable graphics enabled - OS just crashes to a black screen. Here's a replication procedure I posted on the reddit sub a while back.

1) Plug machine into charger.
2) Open a long video on YouTube and turn the sound up.
3) Switch to another tab
4) Let the machine go into display sleep via timeout.
5) The audio will freeze on the last tone being played and you'll need to hard reboot. Keyboard backlight and all firmware controlled things will still function.

Vanilla Windows 10 has been re-installed three times after the shipped Dell image, which also exhibited identical issues, using various approaches each time like crippling windows update in case it was installing screwed up drivers, or using only windows update delivered ones and ignoring Dell's. Problems persisted either way.

I'm yet to install Linux and/or Mac OS X on this thing to try determine if it's a board issue. Also haven't had a chance to line up a call with Dell as I'm due for a business trip soon; and although unstable, at lease the issues are predictable. Introducing new variances is not something I really want to deal with at this point.

I hear you. I'm fairly agnostic in my OS preference. I'll use whatever allows me to do my job with the least hassle and right now that's Windows. I too have used Macs for most of my life. My last machine was the 2010 17" and I ditched them when they decided the 17" wasn't making them any money, leaving people that want to actually use their machines for serious work, out in the cold. But god damn, that 2010 is still kicking. It outlived my previous MSI GS70 whose hinges fell over one day, and it's looking like it's going to outlive the precision in terms of stability. Which is really a shame, because I love the precision for its build quality and still modular storage/memory/GPU options. Probably one of the best PCs I've used.

 

I'm on my third replacement. I have some of these issues. I had to disable C-States in the BIOS in order to stop a lot of the freezing and lockups.

 

Thanks for all who responded. It is good to hear some feedback.

I'll add a couple more to this thread:

- Had to stop using Opera Browser and Opera Mail. Crashed too often.
- Photoshop (light photo editing) quits with error every now and again.
- Today (!) Edge stopped starting. Briefly shows in the task bar upon click and disappears.
- Had to stop playing music as it just wouldn't do it at times. Changed players (Winamp etc) but to no avail.

Btw, my laptop shipped with Ubuntu. You couldn't even use the OS. Mouse was lagging massively. Everything was slow to start and close. I wiped it clean and install a copy of 10 thinking it would be it.

I was able to work around some of the issues by ditching some programs in favour of others. Still trying to get my head around the keyboard layout but I'm getting better at this.

When I have the time, I'll reinstall Windows from 10 to 7 and see if it improves my workability (it suffered greatly as a result of switching back to Dell/Windows combo). If it doesn't I'm going to smash this laptop against a wall. It won't even make it to ebay. Overpriced, nonfunctional piece of junk.

 

New one for today. Right click on desktop - Display Setting. Choose Apps & Features on the left. Window is gone.

EDIT: I'm not even mentioning pretty regular Microsoft Office "application has stopped responding" messages.Thanks god I don't use it very often.

Curious to understand the nature of all this. Memory? IO? SSD? Freaken QA?

I mean this is not a cheap run of the mill laptop for playing videos on Youtube. This is a mil graded computer for CAD/CAM work FFS. Could Dell just not get it right?

 

I think that sound definitively like a hardware issue. My guess would be memory, maybe mobo/cpu.

Your Precision 7510 comes with built in diagnostic tools. Did you try to run them? (http://www.dell.com/support/manuals...3576E1-EF1B-46DB-906F-9A07B70DACE5&lang=en-us)

On the software side I can only think of two reasons why the laptop would behave so erratically: Malware, a bad driver. Windows 10 is a very,very unlikely culprit.

 

Bane of my existence today.

Pretty much convinced this is a software/firmware issue. At least for the video related issues, the power management seems like it's screwed. Hot switching works fine which pretty much means there is no inherent hardware fault with the system. Perhaps a bunch of rails are switched off in the wrong order during power-down when going to sleep and the card panics. Either that or the timing is so marginal that some systems are fine and others absolutely face-plant due to tolerance build-up.

This. You don't expect to be dealing with this given how much these things cost. Not sure how much of a contributor 10 is. I ran 8.1 on my MSI and it was beautiful. Pretty much refuse to install 10 on any of my other systems now because of the sour taste it left with the precision.