Wierd momentary hang (throttling)

So, I have this new 17 R3 and so far, it is pretty awesome. I've seen a few strange things coming out of sleep mode, but they have been one time occurrences (1. speaker audio quit - rebooted and no more problem, 2. wireless card disappeared from OS, it wasn't just off, it didn't even show up in Device manager, rebooted and still gone, complete shutdown and opened the bottom of the laptop to check for damage and wireless came back and has been working fine ever since).

But the one thing that seems to happen after almost every restart is that I'll be doing nothing taxing, maybe reading a web page or playing solitaire or something, and suddenly, it locks up (can't even get the mouse pointer to move) and the fans come on full blast for three or four seconds and then things start moving and the fans turn off and everything is fine. I've reinstalled the OS a few times and it has not happened during OS install. I've also run 3DMark Vantage a couple times and it has not occurred while running the benchmark.

I should note that it happens after all drivers and startup software (antivirus, AlienFX, etc) is running. It has not yet happened after waking from sleep mode.

I've installed BIOS 1.3.6 and installed the latest Intel Thermal Framework driver and it still happens.

I do occasionally run HWMonitor to see what my temps are, but it has never happened when HW Monitor was running. I may add HW monitor to Startup, so that it starts automatically during boot.

The fans coming on make me thing it is some sort of thermal throttling, but I can't yet prove that.

Has anyone experienced something similar and what have you done about it?

 

Turn cpu performance mode off in bios. see if that helps.

 

CPU performance mode is already off. It was one of the first things I turned on when I got the system, along with fan performance mode, and then discovered it doesn't have any impact on i7-6700HQ performance and just makes the fans loud. So it has been turned off ever since. But thanks.

 

I know it happens when hwinfo tries to acces the EC. it takes about 2 seconds. so try to look into that.

 

Interesting. I don;t have hwinfo or any other monitoring software running when it occurs, but it could be that something else is referencing the EC.

 

This happened to me when I got my R4 due to DELL's bloatware, Support assist.
If you have have it installed , there's a a great chance removing it will fix your problem.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ist-agent-version-and-dell-data-vault.771147/

page 2 & 3.

 

I disabled support assist and that seems to have removed the issue. To be fair, if it is an issue with support assist accessing the hardware at startup and only a onetime occurrence at boot, I'm not too bothered by that. My concern was that I might continue to see lockups as I use the laptop more, and that does not appear to be the case.

thanks all for the help.

CPU core temps max out at 72C under heavy load and very quickly drop back into the 40C range when load is reduced, and there is no throttling under heavy load.

 

I gotta say I had the same/similar issue with my first 15" R3.

It wouldn 't hang so much as slow to a crawl any time I would click the start button and/or during start up. Would come and go. Never tried to resolve it. I've since reset the laptop as I am awaitng to send it back to dell due to light bleed. The new one they sent me doesn't do this. What's even wirder is that the new one has crazy temps and differentials (100C-70C-100C-70C) and hte old one was under 85C and within 10-15c of each core. The older one would score ~600 in XTU and the new one is closer to ~900..

Still waiting for Dell to tell me what they're gonna do with my temps. My issue has been escalated... I ordered some thermal paste just in case they hang me out to dry...

 

I've rebooted a few more times and not seen the momentary hang. I guess I could characterize it more as being extremely slow, as when it happened, if I tried to move the mouse across the screen, I'd see the mouse jump about five or six inches across the screen every second or so during the hang/slowdown. It wouldn't respond to any mouse clicks, though.

I should add that I also disable some other Dell stuff, although the driver detection is still active, so it might be something other than Support Assist that caused my problem. But it appears to be gone now. I'll try to go back and see what I disabled and post that here, later.

 

Try the new Intel DPTF driver from Dell site to fix momentary hang issues upon startup. Hope this helps!

 

Yeah, that was one of the first things I tried (see the OP). As I said, after disabling some of the Dell stuff, the issue has not re-occurred.

 

Yeah for 15 r2, i had weird stutters on v8 DPTF and afterupgrading to latest 8.1 fixed lower clock issue and it improved XTU score a lot.