Anyone else having freezing issues with Dell Latitude 7490's?
I’m curious if anyone else is having significant issues with Dell’s Latitude 7490 line. I have around 200 of these machines in our environment, and about 1/3 of them are exhibiting issues with the system randomly freezing and becoming unresponsive. These freezes are occurring anywhere from a few times a week, to a few times a day. These computers aren’t Blue Screening - they’re just completely locking up (can't move anything on the screen) until you force reboot them. Since the computers aren't BSOD'ing, there’s no crash dumps and nothing in any of the logs to help me track down what could be causing this.
My initial thought was hardware failures. I warrantied a couple of the machines with Dell, and had them replace the Motherboard and RAM. The freezing issues were still occurring, so I’m looking into software issues at this point. I rebuilt a couple of these machines with a stock version of Windows 10 downloaded directly from Microsoft's website. Through extensive trial and error testing, we verified that our standard corporate software is not causing this freezing issue. Additionally, we use the exact same software on several other Latitude models, but only the 7490's are experiencing issues.
Anyone else seen similar behavior with this particular model?
We found the problem. We reseated the memory module and it has worked without fail ever since. We knew it wasn't a software issue because we took the drive out of the 7490 and put it in another 7490 and it ran without issue.
We updated everything, ran all the hardware tests and no issues were found but it was still locking up when picked up from the left side. Reseated the Memory and no issues for four days.
Yes, same exact issue with my Latitude 7490, there seems to be at least two different scenarios. The first is when the laptop is being used on its own, if I pick the laptop up from the left side it will completely freeze up. It doesn't happen every time, but it is happening quite often. It's as if picking it up from a certain position either causes the board to flex or the cover plate on the bottom to touch a hardware component on the board. The second scenario is when it's docked, it will be working fine, then when I un-dock from the USB-C the screen remains black and is completely unresponsive. The only fix in both scenarios is a hard reboot.
My laptop is experiencing the same symptoms with my 7490. I did a clean install of windows within the past week and today I had a 2 crashes within 30 minutes of each other both where the computer was on battery power.
@tony.bowman-licor.com there are many different factors that need to be considered to determine exactly what is causing the system to freeze. Can you help me out with some additional troubleshooting steps please -
a) How often does the system freeze i.e once a day, once a week, once a month etc b) Is it a full system lock up or does it recover itself? c) Is it only ever in Windows or does it freeze before Windows? d) Do you get any sort of error messages or warnings before the system freezes? e) Have you checked the system logs and event viewer for any indications of what may be causing this? f) What version of the BIOS are you running? g) How long has this issue been happening for? i) Are you running the latest drivers on the system? j) Are you running the Dell factory image or a corporate image? k) Can you run the extended ePSA tests and note down any error codes generated or if the system freezes during the test (To run the diags, hold down the Fn key and power on the system)
I've got exactly the same problem with freeze. In my case I found how to reproduce the problem at any time. If i slightly push with my finger to the bottom panel (left side, close to the edge, between rows of ventilation grills). It definitely looks like a HW issue. Wondering if there any official solution from Dell? This seems like a class problem.
@sergey12 thanks for getting in touch. Your situation is quite unique if it's freezing when you pick it up in a certain area. That potentially a loose piece of hardware or something not quite seated correctly.
I'll drop you a private message to get more details from you.
I am also seeing this. Checked the event log in the bios under thermal events and saw a couple of error messages that said "system board thermal trip". Would it be safe to assume that if the motherboard or cpu is overheating, then it is telling the OS to shut down?
Can you advise how often is the system shutting down from overheating?
Is the system being used on a flat surface in a well ventilated area when it is shutting down?
After clearing the event logs, is the system still shutting down and giving thermal errors?
Are you running the latest BIOS on the system?
Is the cpu fan spinning correctly during use?
Does it make any abnormal noise when spinning?
Have you run the ePSA on the system and did it return any error codes or shut down during the test? (To run the diags, hold down the Fn key and power on the system)
I'll drop you a private message to get your tag details.
tony.bowman-licor.com
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Posted August 16th, 2019 14:00
We found the problem. We reseated the memory module and it has worked without fail ever since. We knew it wasn't a software issue because we took the drive out of the 7490 and put it in another 7490 and it ran without issue.
We updated everything, ran all the hardware tests and no issues were found but it was still locking up when picked up from the left side. Reseated the Memory and no issues for four days.