Hands on Dell Precision 7710

Update- Pun intended - smiley face -

Switched on my 7710 this afternoon then checked which version of Windows was on my machine now - as of today it's Windows 10 Pro - 1709 which confirms what Ygohome told me , however within a few minutes of being on my laptop Windows requested I restarted my machine for further updates which I did - the Windows logo remained ' stuck ' in the middle of my screen for over 2 hours [ is this normal? ] before returning to the page I was on and allowing me to continue with what I was doing - had it been important I'd have been very disappointed that my 7710 was out of action for the 2 hours + it took to complete this update .

OK , Guys , I realise tis isn't the thread for this type of problem/subject so I will desist from complaining about this matter now , just thought I'd give you a further update about what was going on .

Thank you everyone .

 

Our two 7710's are 2 yrs old this month. One of the 7710's (the one I use) is working awesomely. But the other 7710 is acting very slow from time to time. Task manager doesn't show any irregularities, ie it's not high CPU or DISK usage at the times this occurs. In fact, that is part of the problem, there isn't any disk activity at all when it should. For example, some programs I launch and about 5 seconds later it finally responds and starts to launch. Other times the program launches right away such as file manager and the window opens but it takes 5-10 seconds for it to show any folders or drives. Really weird. I did SSD benchmark testing and it was great, no irregularities. And this is after a restart with no other programs launched other than basics that we have on both 7710s. I thought it might be drop box doing a big sync or something, but I disabled drop box and same thing happens. It's extremely annoying if we have a VM running because when this slow down happens then no disk activity is occurring and the VMs just hangs during that time.

One thing though, this 7710 with the problem has a high pitched electrical whine noise (like a dog whistle noise), almost imperceptible. The noise is there though and it drives me nuts, but the person who uses it doesn't notice the sound so we've not done anything about it yet. The battery diagnostic shows that it needs replacing. But on my 7710, the battery is excellent still. I'm wondering if something related to power delivery is the problem. I'm calling dell on monday to order replacement battery but I'm going to ask if they would replace the mobo too to fix the electrical whine.

So, I'm going to do some diagnostic sfc and dsim using a windows ISO file to see if that fixes anything. If that doesn't do it then I may do an inplace reinstall of the OS. Then I'm ordering the battery replacement and mobo tomorrow. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks

*edit:
We contacted dell pro support via chat (my preferred means ). They asked if we would try updating to later BIOS (from 1.13.6 to 1.15.4) to see if that stops the whine, it didn't.

Agent (*ProSupport Christian Quick): "In this case we can replace the battery, motherboard and dc-in cable to help with these issues though if performance issues continue after this hardware replacement we may need to re-install Windows to correct the performance issue as it may just be software related."​

I'm pleased so far. *the battery came with 3yr extended warranty even though it doesn't show on my system purchase., The battery serial # and part# itself confirmed to Dell that it has 3yr warranty (nice!). I'll update again after the technician replaces the parts.

 

Today the technician arrived and replaced the mobo and the electrical whine is gone.

The performance lag is still there though in on this particular system where we replaced the mobo. I was kindof hoping the lag was somehow hardware related but looks like we'll be reinstalling the OS on it. Strange though because I thought going from 1703 to 1709 would basically be like doing an inplace reinstall. Yet the performance issue was there in 1703 and still exists in 1709 on this particular system. So I'm not entirely sure an in-place OS reinstall will fix the issue. We may have to wipe out the system partition completely and reinstall from thumb drive.

 

Could the performance lag be related to a Meltdown / Spectre patch from Microsoft?

Intel also released microcode updates for Spectre, which may cause a drop in CPU performance of 5 to 30%. Note that a microcode update will not be rolled back by re-installing the OS. Could be that Dell already updated the microcode on your mobo.

 

I've been reading up on this... The microcode update in the latest Dell BIOS does not apply a permanent change to the Intel CPU. It is loaded into the CPU at boot time. It can be done by the BIOS or the OS during an early phase of the boot process. Until recently, Microsoft has been hesitant to roll out microcode updates for this issue for some reason, leaving it to motherboard manufacturers to produce BIOS updates to get this rolled out. Moving the CPU to a new motherboard that does not have the updated BIOS should effectively revert the change.

Microsoft is going to start including the microcode update in future Windows 10 cumulative patches, it seems, I don't think that there is any avoiding it. This hasn't happened yet, but an update including updated microcode is available on the Windows Update catalog site. (The microcode can also be updated at OS boot time — it would have to be re-done every time the system boots.)
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...t-shipping-the-intel-spectre-microcode-fixes/

That said, the Spectre microcode patch may reduce system performance for certain CPU-intensive tasks, but it does not introduce lag like you are describing. You have another problem.

One thing that you could do is run LatencyMon and see if there is a kernel module responsible for the delay that you are encountering. (Kernel modules are usually related to device drivers, but other things like backup tools could include a kernel module, I've seen plenty that aren't cleaned up properly after a program is uninstalled and turn around and cause problems later.)
http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

If issues are specific to File Explorer delays or delays pulling up a list of files, a shell extension could be to blame. This tool allows you to see installed shell extensions and disable them.
https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html

Either of the above two problems would persist across a major Windows upgrade or in-place reinstall.

 

Thanks I'll try your suggestions and post back later how it went.

 

Hi,
The diagnostic tools were very nice Aaron. I've uninstalled a few programs that were causing file explorer shell extension issues. Namely TortoiseSVN and Dropbox. I've since reinstalled those programs and seems fine so far.

The latency checker shows ACPI as being main source of latency on both 7710s that we own. Not sure if that is a real concern or not.

Dropbox was also an issue in another way... It was always in contention for a few very large files (some files over 20GB in size) that it could not index/sync. Yet it was always trying to contend for those files while another program always had them locked. And dropbox is CPU hog when it indexes. Those files should not have been under dropbox so I relocated them to different location (relocated them to different SSD drive). These were very large email archive .pst files that were always changing and open in outlook and so dropbox was always trying to resync them but could not. I've since set his email up as IMAP instead of POP3. He can still autoarchive those emails to local.pst, but it won't be synced to dropbox. I think the dropbox contention for the giant .pst outlook files may have been causing IO issues with the VMs which were on the same SSD.

Also extended his virtual disk partitions in the VMs, they were producing defender alerts from low storage space in those VMs. Low disk space would certainly cause issues in the VMs.

We'll see though in next week or so when he lets me know how his laptop performs.

In summary, I think we were seeing a couple issues:
- file explorer lag from TortoiseSVN extension
- dropbox index contention with a few large files
- running low on VM virtual disk space

Still may do a fresh install of OS though as I'm not 100% I solved his problems on his 7710.

Thanks

 

Today I'll be replacing the bezel on my display and also the fans/heatsink assembly. Bezel has a hairline crack in the upper left corner. I think I got that when checking in through airport security. Fan bearings or something was making excessive noise so replacing fans. Parts took only a day to arrive from Pro Support.

Display bezel I think simply requires prying it off at edges. But the manual says I need to first completely remove the display assembly from hinges. Does anyone know if that is really necessary? I'll do that, but doesn't appear to be necessary.

Thanks

 

I've removed the display bezel from the 7510 before by simply prying it out. It was no hassle (though it did have some sticky stuff holding it in so it took a little bit of effort to get it going). I don't see why the 7710 would be any different.

 

Thanks. Yeah, the new bezel has double sided tape around the edges in addition to the clips. I'll just be careful during removal but expect some resistance as I pry it up.