help [resolved] Precision 5530 - Help needed - Extreme lags in BIOS and during boot.

[serpro69]

I'm having some issues with my currently-main system and need some help figuring out what else I can do before I need to take it to service (since the warranty expired, unfortunately), and service is probably my last resort since it costs a ton here in Norway.

 

Background:

On Sunday, 12th, I've left my laptop copying some stuff to NAS while I went out for a few hours. After coming back home I discovered that the laptop got a bit "slow", so I've decided to reboot. The boot took much longer than it usually does, and ubuntu was throwing a bunch of "usb device descriptor read" errors in what seemed like a loop, but it did boot eventually. I tried to reboot again, and again got the same issues during boot. After booting up it seems to be working just fine though.

I've also discovered that both the grub menu and the custom boot menu (F12) got very slow, and I actually need to wait between I press <arrow down/up> and see the changes in the menu.

 

What I've done so far:

- run diagnostics several times - no errors found (the diagnostics tool is also very laggy)

- update bios (from 1.19.0 to 1.24.0)

- reset bios to defaults (at this point I discovered bios is also extremely slow in responding to things, I can barely move around in BIOS)

- reset internal clock (via pressing power for ~30sec)

- remove ubuntu and grub, I now only have windows... 

 

The strange thing is - it seems that all the lag happens only in pre-boot. I'm now booted to windows and the performance is fine as far as I can tell.

 

Before the issue appeared, the only change I can think of is installing the next linux kernel update (a patch version). But I don't really see how that could have affected anything, especially since now I don't even have ubuntu installed anymore.

 

What else can I do to try to fix this issue? How else can I "debug" if it's a hardware issue? Any other advice?

 

Thanks all in advance.

[Rinconmike]

Is the slow boot to the dell logo or from the logo to windows?  I have had issues with windows of a slow boot and clearing temp files sped that up. 
 

could it also be a drive issue? Have you run check disk?  Also an sfc scannow?

 

 

[serpro69]

11 minutes ago, Rinconmike said:

Is the slow boot to the dell logo or from the logo to windows?  I have had issues with windows of a slow boot and clearing temp files sped that up. 
 

could it also be a drive issue? Have you run check disk?  Also an sfc scannow?

 

 

Hey, thanks for the response.

 

The "slowness" starts as soon as the dell logo appears and until the OS is booted. Anything I do before OS boots up - bios, dell diagnostics, boot menu (via F12), grub, etc - has a lot of lag and is very hard to use. E.g. in BIOS/diagnostics I can only navigate with keyboard due to huge lag. And even then, between a keypress and seeing changes on the screen I need to wait for like half a minute or more.

But as soon as OS boots up - things seem to be working just fine. 

 

I didn't check the disk yet. I'll do that as soon as I'm done backing it up. You're talking about `chkdsk` or anything else?

 

I don't think it's an issue with Windows, I don't use windows daily (only for occasional gaming), and not sure that cleaning windows-specific temp files will do anything. And the issue is present both in Ubuntu and Windows. Or rather, it's not present at all that I can see when OS is booted up. So probably `sfc scannow` will not do much either.

[Rinconmike]

Yes chkdsk. 
 

i had a windows issue on my 7760 where I tried to turn off bit locker and could not do anything. Bitlocker stalled at decrypting. I wound up being able to pause the decrypt and delete my files in my Dropbox (unlinked from DB first) and the the decrypt finished. 
 

also the boot diagnostic flag an issue with the drive but once decrypted no issues and no errors is the dell diag. 
 

probably unrelated to your issue. 
 

can you take the drive out and with no drive see of you can boot into bios with no lag issues?  Run boot thorough diag again. 

 

can system be stuck in a low power mode?

[serpro69]

8 minutes ago, Rinconmike said:

can you take the drive out and with no drive see of you can boot into bios with no lag issues?  Run boot thorough diag again. 

 

 

Yes, was planning to do that, but need to take it apart and there are two "problematic" screws on the bottom cover that I need to somehow deal with. Will try to do something about that tomorrow or later in the week.

 

8 minutes ago, Rinconmike said:

can system be stuck in a low power mode?

 

Could be. Any way to check/fix that w/o disassembly?

[Rinconmike]

What about disabling the drive in the bios. Maybe that will make the system act the same as if there was no drive. 

[serpro69]

Yeah, that could be a possibility. Thanks for the tip, I'll try to do it and will report back.

The bios is so slow that after working with it for the past couple days I wasn't even considering going back in there to try anything else...

[Rinconmike]

Also try disconnecting from power and hold the power button down for 30 to 60 seconds. I had that fix a no boot issue on a 7710 once. Might have to disconnect the battery too. 

[serpro69]

Yes, tried that already - it resets the RTC? Didn't help unfortunately. 

I also read that you need to take out the battery for it to work, but that post was from years back and it seems to be now working even with connected battery.

[Aaron44126]

This is an odd one for sure...

I've had cases where the system lags for no apparent reason that have turned out to be power related.  I think that the system "thinks" that it has an underpowered connection and goes to hard throttling mode.  Solved by disconnecting the internal battery and PSU and then reconnecting — in a few cases it was actually the PSU's fault (@*%# Delta PSUs) so I had to swap it out.

...But in these cases for me, the lag would persist into Windows.

 

In this case, I think that the first thing I would try would be disabling the NVMe drive in the BIOS (as @Rinconmike recommended) to rule that out.  If that "fixes" the problem, I guess consider replacing the drive.  (...But a flaky drive would probably also be causing issues in Windows.)

 

The next thing would be to just reset the BIOS to default settings and see if that helps at all.  ...But if it doesn't, it could be quite cumbersome to go and put all of the settings back to how you like them.

 

Failing that, I guess we are looking at motherboard replacement.

 

It would be pretty strange if a Linux kernel update kicked off this issue.

 

...Are you looking at getting Precision 7X70 (I know you've been posting a bit in that thread)?  Might just have to hang in there for a month or so 😕.  Just try not to reboot ever 😛.

[serpro69]

1 hour ago, Aaron44126 said:

The next thing would be to just reset the BIOS to default settings and see if that helps at all.  ...But if it doesn't, it could be quite cumbersome to go and put all of the settings back to how you like them.

 

Did that already - didn't help. I'm not even going to bother trying to revert the settings to what they were as it's probably going to cost me half my nervous system with so much lag... 

 

1 hour ago, Aaron44126 said:

It would be pretty strange if a Linux kernel update kicked off this issue.

 

Yeah, I also don't think it did. Probably just a freakish coincidence. 

 

1 hour ago, Aaron44126 said:

...Are you looking at getting Precision 7X70 (I know you've been posting a bit in that thread)?  Might just have to hang in there for a month or so 😕.  Just try not to reboot ever 😛.

I am indeed. I don't have much time to be "active" in the forums these days, but I'm watching that thread very closely :) And while 7770 is planned to be my next main system, I still wouldn't want to just "throw out" my current one, so need to get to the bottom of this issue one way or another. Besides, after I deleted Ubuntu partition the laptop became pretty useless for me anyways (until I'm able to reinstall Ubuntu) - all I have in Windows is a handful of games 😛.

[Aaron44126]

The other thing that I can suggest is to just disconnect the main battery, run on AC power only, and see if that fixes it.  I know that involves removing the bottom panel.  Batteries have a limited life and while I have not experienced this particular symptom before, I have seen laptops display some very strange behavior when hooked up to a battery that is ready to be EOL (even if they are not running on battery power).

[serpro69]

I will try that, thanks. Although dell reports the battery to be in good (or maybe even excellent, don't really remember) condition. Not sure how far that can be trusted of course. But might as well try all possible options before I start replacing parts :) 

[serpro69]

So the story continues.

Took apart the machine, took out battery, ssd, ram, disconnected kb and touchpad, and cleaned the fans while I was at it.

Then I put (almost) everything back together and tried to:

- boot up w/o battery - nothing changed

- removed ssd and boot up w/o ssd and battery - nothing changed

- w/o putting ssd/battery back, ran "thorough diagnostics" on RAM and CPU - all tests passed and still can't say that anything changed performance-wise

- reset bios again - nothing changed

- tried only 1 out of 2 ram modules (each at a time) - same same

 

Then I put everything back again and tried again - and again getting very poor performance in pre-boot.

 

Since I deleted the partition on which Ubuntu has lived, I am now trying to run/install ubuntu from a USB flash-drive , and weirdly enough (or maybe not?), I'm getting same usb-related errors that I saw in the installed Ubuntu when these issues first appeared.

Also just to clarify, on the installed Ubuntu I tried to disconnect all USB devices and boot up - that didn't make the usb errors go away. I even tried to disable USB (and TB along with it) in BIOS and still was getting these usb errors. But with installed Ubuntu it did eventually "power through" and boot up. When I try to run Ubuntu from the flash drive - it does not even get to the screen with two buttons (try ubuntu / install ubuntu).

Spoiler

 

[Aaron44126]

It would be hard to fully disable USB in these laptops.  It goes a bit beyond the USB ports on the sides — the webcam, Bluetooth module, and fingerprint reader (if you have one) and perhaps other things are attached via internal USB as well.

 

I'm noticing the delay of several seconds between attempts when it tries to query the USB device descriptor there and I'm thinking that yes indeed these may be connected.  I've seen the BIOS get hung up on USB stuff, now that I think about it — my Precision 7560 will hang in the BIOS if I have my USB hub connected.  (The USB hub has a couple of external optical drives connected to it and also a RCA video import dongle thing.  I haven't bothered figuring out which specific device is causing the problem, I just don't connect the hub unless I need something connected to it and it works fine after boot.)

 

...If you boot into Windows, are you seeing any "USB device descriptor failed" errors if you open up Device Manager?

[serpro69]

9 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

It goes a bit beyond the USB ports on the sides — the webcam, Bluetooth module, and fingerprint reader (if you have one) and perhaps other things are attached via internal USB as well.

 

Yeah, that's why I tried to disconnect/re-plug some other things inside as well. Not sure I can do more than already did in that regard.

 

I also ran USB diagnostics and that came back w/o errors also. But I'm not really sure if those test internal usb connections also.

 

15 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

...If you boot into Windows, are you seeing any "USB device descriptor failed" errors if you open up Device Manager?

Nope, I don't see any errors in the Device Manager at all. I guess it can be trusted, but I'll check if I can find some other software for Win do run some hardware diagnostics.

[serpro69]

38 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

It goes a bit beyond the USB ports on the sides — the webcam, Bluetooth module, and fingerprint reader (if you have one) and perhaps other things are attached via internal USB as well.

OK, weirdly now that you mentioned a webcam and BT, I decided to test if it works at all, and I don't think that the webcam does. Tried on two websites (ms teams and jitsi), discord, and some online webcam tests - none of them can detect the webcam.

So it either broke or I forgot to connect smth. But in the Precision 5530 service manual I don't see that the webcam is mentioned as having a separate connection cable https://dl.dell.com/topicspdf/precision-15-5530-laptop_service-manual2_en-us.pdf in the display disassembly section. It does show 2 cables though, but doesn't really mention if either of them is dedicated for the webcam or not. And I didn't try to disconnect either of those anyways, so it's definitely not me forgetting to plug one of those back. 

[Aaron44126]

  

13 minutes ago, serpro69 said:

Yeah, that's why I tried to disconnect/re-plug some other things inside as well.

 

Most of the internal USB stuff will have a connection on the motherboard.

 

1 = touchpad, 2 = keyboard (not sure if these are actually USB or not)

5 = fingerprint reader cable

Bluetooth module is built into the WiFi card but attached via USB (something else you can try to remove)

 

If you have the touchscreen display, I believe the "touch" part of that is also USB attached.

 

Not sure how you would disconnect just the webcam.  My M6700 has separate cables for the display and the webcam but I think some newer systems bundle them together (on the motherboard side anyway).  If you can remove the display bezel, there might be a cable on the webcam module side that you can disconnect.  (Not sure how easy it is to remove the display bezel on the XPS-style Precisions.  On the 7000-series it is pretty easy to just pry off.  It's attached with some plastic tabs and adhesive.)

[Aaron44126]

Oh, I think there is a toggle in the BIOS setup to disable the webcam as well?

[Aaron44126]

I found reference that "6" in the image above is the display touchscreen cable (which I believe is USB).

[Aaron44126]

One more.  Display cable does indeed have "one" end on the motherboard side and "multiple" ends on the other side.  So if you do want to disconnect the webcam, probably best to access the webcam and pull the cable from that end.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/255084291259?epid=19030890620

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/EycAAOSwkWZhDT5p/s-l1600.jpg

[serpro69]

The touch on the screen has been disabled in the BIOS since forever, but I will try to disconnect the cable for it just in case.

 

I'm also not sure if kb/touchpad are connected via USB, but I tried to disconnect the touchpad and boot w/o it. I guess I could try to disconnect the kb as well and use an external one via USB port.

 

Also tried re-plugging #3 and #4 (not sure what they are), but didn't try to boot w/o them being connected.

 

But seeing the webcam issues in Windows now, I guess that's the natural next step to try first. So tomorrow I'll try to take the screen apart and see if I can get to the webcam and disconnect.

 

Thanks a lot for the tips @Aaron44126!

[Aaron44126]

#3 = power connector (seems important)

#4 = speakers (not USB, just a straight analog audio connection most likely)

 

Maybe first just try to disable webcam in the BIOS and see if that helps you at all.  Way easier.

 

Do you see webcam in Device Manager?  (Just one more possible hint.)

 

 

[serpro69]

No, webcam was not in device manager either. So it's clearly experiencing some issues.

 

The question is, is it the only faulty piece (which I very much hope it is).

So I disabled all devices in "Wireless" section, plus the webcam and SD card (not sure if that's usb or not, but what the hell) in the bios and did a restart - that unfortunately didn't help as far as the pre-boot performance goes. But then I tried to boot into Ubuntu from the flash drive and that did finally work. I also didn't see any usb errors in the splash screen anymore. I then rebooted again into BIOS - and viola, it works just fine now. Not sure which of the above is causing the issues. Most likely the web-cam, but I'm going to enable things one by one now and test it out more and then install Ubuntu back... what a day...

 

Thanks again for all the help @Aaron44126 and @Rinconmike!

[Aaron44126]

Lucky that you're using Linux I guess, the USB error messages gave a thread to follow...

 

Anyway, in Device Manager you can select a device and then "View -> Devices by connection" from the top menu to see if a device is connected by USB or not.  Here we have... webcam = USB, SD card reader = PCIe.