Dell forum: Dell XPS USB 3.0 Issues

I've seen this happen for years with no "one thing" being the cause. I have run into folk that think it's a driver or the maker but let me share I have ZERO PROBLEMS with this today.

However I know to look at the various control panels to remove, uncheck power saver settings, change the drive to not spin down (if that's what I want) and a few other things.

Sadly, I've never found it to be one thing. One time it was the same old USB power issue. That is, using a wall wart to power the drive fixed it.

Then again, I run into folk that want Dell to fix it so the wall wart is not required.
Bob

But I'm away from the office for a few weeks.

The drivers are whatever Dell supplied. At the office we never update or chase down new drivers.

But the fail to work USB 3.0 drives are returned as defective. Let the makers eat those.
We learned long ago Dell is not going to change their stuff with work with someone's drive. So we took the easy exit.

I'm sure folk wanted a better answer and for that I apologize.
Bob

I added your post to the dell forum

I happen to be a XPS L702X owner and have been harassing Dell about what this issue is all about and have been responded to by one of their liaisons and claims their engineers can not duplicate the USB issue. Either they are really incompetent or just blatantly disregarding the issue. They have already tried swapping out hardware on my system hoping it would blindly resolve something, but I threw it back in their face when the onsite technician told me it wasn't really going to solve the issue. The 2.0 and 3.0 ports are all on the same daughter board and if it was truly a hardware issue the 2.0 ports would be effected too or the thing would not work at all period. The fact that rebooting temporarily fixes things indicated to the tech that it leans more towards a software issue. Dell must not have the slightest about what is going on with these systems and is making blind attempts to resolve it inconveniencing the user more than anything.

Anyone who has this issue is going to be forced to jump through hoops with tech support first by them sending a tech out to swap parts, which did not resolve anything, and then having them send the system to the warehouse to do a thorough check. If push comes to shove and they decide the laptop is no good they said they would replace it with a new system.

Who is to say the new one won't have the same degree of quality assurance as the defective one? There are more updated unofficial USB drivers out there but who knows what more problems they may cause to an already faulty system. Users have already tried talking to the UsB manufacturers and they are wiping their hands on this claiming it's all on Dell.

So why has Dell continued to sell these systems knowing there are issues they don't have an answer to? The funny thing is some users have no issue at all while others have had to deal with it right out of the box.

I eventually had Dell replace the entire system. I was tired of not getting any answers about the issue and of all the hoops they were having me jump through. Having some of the internal hardware replaced fixed the issue, for some, but not all.

Dell had remote in, had an onsite tech replace parts, and finally got fed up and told them to rebuild another system for me and then I would send back the old laptop. Needless to say the new laptop has worked flawlessly now. I believe they used a new motherboard for this new build and that might have been the issue.

As much as it pains some of you to start from scratch, it's about the only thing that will fix your problem at this point.

First call they tried remotely to check everything and uninstalled everything and reinstalled drivers.
Second call I got hung up on.
Third call at 2AM they wanted me to reinstall windows, my husband was asleep (trying) so I hung up and did that and then download all the newest drivers and still had the problem.
I wrrote 4 emails and then filled out the request to return form and got no responses to any of them by the end of the next day. Also wrote an email to someone in customer service who had emailed me the packing slip. The packing slip envelope had never been sealed and nothing was in it so I have no idea where it may be.
Forth call was answered by a man who said "no problem it's probably faulty ports" and a tech could come out and replace them. By them I had seen all the forums at Dell and here and because of past experience with Dell tech support told them I wanted to return it. He said he would send the problem to his supervisor, Louie, who would call or email me. By yesterday afternoon had not received this call so called back and demanded that they get the return process started.
I doubt it, but I wanted them to understand the main reason I am returning it by Fedex today is not because the part needs replacing, I would have allowed that IF it had not been so hard to get to that point. It is because of all the run around you get from tech support. Maybe they are just doing what Dell wants them to do but I figure my time is worth more than that and after checking out the basic solutions they should move to the obvious causes.

One thing I have learned the hard way, make a partition on your hard drive where you can quickly save files or photos. On my larger drives I have a seperate folder for photos and that way even if windows does a total crash you still have your files. I even have my Outlook pst file save there so I still have my contacts and emails.

Yep, same problem here and the really bad news is they are selling these things through their outlet store which means people are returning them, Dell either hasn't the time or inclination to thoroughly test them to duplicate what happens on the consumer side and thus they just put them back up for sale.

That really sucks.

I've gotten all the messages, "this drive would work faster...etc." and have had drives plugged in that worked for a couple of days before suddenly becoming inaccessible. The system will show it still connected and might even show the root of the drive with a list of folders but trying to access anything in one of those folders and it appears empty. These drives, both 3.0 and 2.0, work fine on my old ACER notebook. I've also had both a hard-wired usb mouse in the 2.0 port begin to act flaky and a logitech wireless mouse in that port act flaky. Rebooting solves the problem for a while but the problem always reoccurs.

I've got yet another e-mail and call in to Dell to speak to a technician and I've spent more time on the phone talking to India this week than I ever imagined I would.

This is ridiculous.

I have a week old Vostro 3750, I5, 1GB nvidia graphics, work great, coolest running laptop I have ever seen. I have spent hours with tech support, have sent 4 emails and filled a a request form to return the computer. They have checked drivers and setting and I have done a clean install of win7 and the problem still exists. When I start the computer the usb 3 ports work for several minutes then shut off and even a mouse won't work on them. I can plug them into the usb 2 ports and they work fine but the 3.0 ports will not work until I reboot the computer. There has been no response to my emails or return request so I called again this morning and was told it is probably faulty usb ports and they want to send a technician out to replace them. I told them I have requested to return it and really don't want to deal with them anymore. The usb 3.0 issue seems to be a common problem, at least on the XPS and Vostro machines. I have placed several posts on the Dell Laptop forum and just got an email that the first one has been deleted due to objectionable language. Here is the post:
"I too have this problem. I bought a 2TB USB 3.0 Seagate hard drive about 6 weeks ago and have been using it on an old desktop. I got my Vostro 3740 on July 27 and fell in love with it immediately. Then on Saturday July 30 moved the hard drive to the new laptop. Within 3 minutes the light went out on it and it quit working. I don't have anything else that is usb 3.0 but my mouse also would not work on the 3.0 port. I rebooted and everything worked fine for several minutes. Disconnected the drive and put it on the usb 2.0 port and it worked fine. Called tech support and they insisted it is a software problem. I have spent several hours and the last call they told me I needed to reinstall windows. They asked if I had any important files and wanted to do it right then. I have a small 50GB partition on the drive to keep all my files so that was not a problem. As it was after midnight I hung up, did a clean install of windows and then stayed up until nearly 4 AM to get the drivers. Guess What? The usb 3 ports still cut off. Sometimes they last for maybe as much as an hour but if I start using the hard drive they cut off. I have sent 4 emails and finally filled out a request to return form and have gotten no response. I called today and a superviser said it sounds like faulty ports and a service tech could come and replace them. Since 1994 I have had 3 Gateway desktops, a Lenovo, an HP and a Toshiba laptop and other than the 2 Dell laptops and the Dell desktop have NEVER ONCE called tech support. I love everything about this laptop except the terrible support you get when there is a problem. If they had agreed that it was a hardware problem I would not be returning it. But all the crap you go through is wrong. I got laid off last year and took early retirement so do not have a lot of money for extras like this and I wanted the antiglare screen, 2nd gen processor and nvidia graphics card and that costs a lot more money in anything other than the Vostro. Guess you really do get what you pay for." ________________________________________________________

Depending on who makes the mtrbd. for Dell can supply a USB 3.0 chipset as part of the make-up. In no uncertain terms there are various makers. These are Asus and Intel to name a few but Intel seems to have some issues. While what makes one work or not is entirely on the what is supplied to Dell. If in fact this is a chipset problem, then looking at the supplied chipset and then visit the maker could shed light on the issue. I supply the below link that offers some insight into the topic.

http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/intel-delays-usb-3-0-chipset-until-2012-2010063/

Since this is 2011, mentioning 2012 is an eye-opener. However, what that means to Dell's problem maybe part of the issue.

tada -----Willy

I have similar problems as reported here. When copying files to the drive, the copy process suddenly stops and freezes. Windows cannot be shut down and the system has to be powered off. Currently I have email conversation with DELL support. They told me the usual things, install the newest driver, newest bios, even try it with older driver versions. All of that didn't help yet and also the same problems occur with a different USB3.0 hard drive (both from Western Digital, but I don't think the hard drive manufacturer is the problem). With USB 2 the drive works perfectly without any problems. Also an external eSATA-Drive works perfectly without problems so it's really the USB 3 driver or maybe the whole hardware part is designed bad. I hope there will be a solution and will post if it works again.

Finally replacing the hardware USB-Controller solved the problem. Dell sent a technician and he replaced the part. Now everything works fine.

If I plug in a USB 3.0 hub into my new XPS L702X the laptop tries to start than shuts down. If I plug in a USB 3.0 harddrive the computer will start fine. If I plug the USB 3.0 hub in after the computer starts, everything works fine (hub and devices plugged into hub). I've tried two different USB 3.0 hubs with the same results. Since the computer does not even start, this can not be a driver issue. Since everything works fine after the computer starts it can not be a hardware issue. This must be a BIOS issue, but I have the latest BIOS. Any suggestions??

I've done some more testing and found that the computer only will not start when it resumes from hibernation. If I unplug the USB 3.0 drive from the USB 3.0 hub then the computer will boot. If I enter the BIOS at startup and exit with no changes then the computer will boot with the USB 3.0 hub and drive. Strange??

I have the exact same laptop, and like everyone else i have experienced the same issues. It didn't happen very often at first, but it was extremely annoying. I tried updating the chipset drivers with each of the 2 new realeases and neither fixed the problem, after the second chipset update i applied just a couple days ago it actually got worse. I ended up calling dell and they basically uninstalled and reinstalled the chipsets again and ran Dell Support center software to do a bunch of system checks, didn't work, and actually my 2.0 port stopped working then as well. The sent out a repair guy to swap out the motherboard, daughter boards, and ports. When the repair guy brought it back i hooked up a thumb drive to the 2.0 port and it still did not work. we tried updating the chipset drivers again with the lates release from dell, 10-13-11, to no avail.

Here is the possible fix, it is really simple and I hope it works for others.

Shutdown your computer and remove anything connected through the usb ports. Restart and on the startup screen hit F2 for setup. go to advanced tab, then drop down to miscellaneous devices, disable external usb ports. then hit F10 to save and exit. Once your computer restarts go to device manager (click on start icon, right click on computer, select Manage) select device manager and in the roll out menu to the right expand Universal Serial Bus Controllers. there should be two lines with weird icons to the left instead of the typical usb connector icon. right click on each one one at a time and enable them. once enabled i restarted my computer and everything has been working fine sense.

I am not sure if this is the fix or if it actually was a hard ware issue, so i am curious if someone who is having the issue but has not had any hardware replaced can try it and see if it works. Please try this before reformatting the drive. They tried to get me to do that too.

dell XPS L702X, intel Core i7 2.2GHz, 8GB Ram, 80GB SSD 400GB SATA Drive.

Same problem here.
I am jumping through all of Dell's hoops but to no avail
The date is Jan 20th 2012, lets fix this thing Dell!