Hi. I have a Dell XPS 8700 that I purchased in Nov 2015. Its a 64 bit system and has the following details (all as when purchased):
- 4th Generation Intel(R) Core(T M) i7-4790 processor (8M Cache , up to 4.00 GHz)
- 16GB Dual Channel DDR3 1600MHz (4GBx4)
- 2TB 7200 rpm Hard Drive + 32GB mSATA Solid State Drive (Plus a second 2TB drive I added in)
- AMD Radeon(TM) HD R9 270 2GB G DDR5
- Intel(R) 7260AC + BT4.0 [802.1 1ac + Bluetooth 4.0, Dual Band 2.45 GHz,2x2]
It's been a great system and I've only used it for office and business applications (nowadays mostly all online) and some music functions (streaming, ripping, playing mostly).
It has run perfectly since purchase and I've always kept it clean and maintained with Norton and Malwarebytes etc etc.
A week before our Christmas shut-down it started to randomly freeze. The cursor would stop and no input of any sort was possible. Only option was hard restart.
The system would then work for a while but would always freeze again at some point within an hour or so. If I restarted and left the system alone for an hour or so it would freeze at the log-on screen.
I tried numerous fixes, including using "Driver Easy" Pro to update all drivers and system restore. I did a full "Chckdsk" which took a full 24 hours but came up with no issues. Nothing I tried stopped the issue.
In the end I disconnected everything from the system (including the 2nd harddrive) and used the inbuilt Factory Reset feature to wipe the C drive and reinstall windows to the factory state. I was actually really happy with this as I figured it had to sort my issues out and meant I could keep running Windows 7 rather than "upgrade" to Windows 10 (as I haven't got the Windows 7 recovery disc which I thought I would need).
So all seemed good and I was working away, re-installing software etc etc. I again used "Driver Easy" Pro to update all drivers and updated Windows as well as Norton and Malwarebytes. The computer wouldn't freeze at all anymore, so all good.
Until I decided to install a printer. I went to "Devices and Printers" and clicked "Add Printer" and Windows thought about things for a bit and then froze again, fully locked up.
Now when I run the computer it works fine, no freezes at all no matter how long I leave it running, unless I open "Devices and Printers". As soon as I just open "Devices and Printers" BAM, system freeze and lock-up.
I've now run the Dell System Diagnostics which did a full system scan and tested all hardware with stress tests etc. Everything passed with no issues detected.
So now I'm at a loss and don't know what to do. I've tried everything I can think of to "save" my Windows 7 computer but if I can't get passed this "Devices and Printers" freeze/lock-up I'll have no choice but to bin it and buy a new one.
Any help would be hugely appreciated.
Cheers.
- 4th Generation Intel(R) Core(T M) i7-4790 processor (8M Cache , up to 4.00 GHz)
- 16GB Dual Channel DDR3 1600MHz (4GBx4)
- 2TB 7200 rpm Hard Drive + 32GB mSATA Solid State Drive (Plus a second 2TB drive I added in)
- AMD Radeon(TM) HD R9 270 2GB G DDR5
- Intel(R) 7260AC + BT4.0 [802.1 1ac + Bluetooth 4.0, Dual Band 2.45 GHz,2x2]
It's been a great system and I've only used it for office and business applications (nowadays mostly all online) and some music functions (streaming, ripping, playing mostly).
It has run perfectly since purchase and I've always kept it clean and maintained with Norton and Malwarebytes etc etc.
A week before our Christmas shut-down it started to randomly freeze. The cursor would stop and no input of any sort was possible. Only option was hard restart.
The system would then work for a while but would always freeze again at some point within an hour or so. If I restarted and left the system alone for an hour or so it would freeze at the log-on screen.
I tried numerous fixes, including using "Driver Easy" Pro to update all drivers and system restore. I did a full "Chckdsk" which took a full 24 hours but came up with no issues. Nothing I tried stopped the issue.
In the end I disconnected everything from the system (including the 2nd harddrive) and used the inbuilt Factory Reset feature to wipe the C drive and reinstall windows to the factory state. I was actually really happy with this as I figured it had to sort my issues out and meant I could keep running Windows 7 rather than "upgrade" to Windows 10 (as I haven't got the Windows 7 recovery disc which I thought I would need).
So all seemed good and I was working away, re-installing software etc etc. I again used "Driver Easy" Pro to update all drivers and updated Windows as well as Norton and Malwarebytes. The computer wouldn't freeze at all anymore, so all good.
Until I decided to install a printer. I went to "Devices and Printers" and clicked "Add Printer" and Windows thought about things for a bit and then froze again, fully locked up.
Now when I run the computer it works fine, no freezes at all no matter how long I leave it running, unless I open "Devices and Printers". As soon as I just open "Devices and Printers" BAM, system freeze and lock-up.
I've now run the Dell System Diagnostics which did a full system scan and tested all hardware with stress tests etc. Everything passed with no issues detected.
So now I'm at a loss and don't know what to do. I've tried everything I can think of to "save" my Windows 7 computer but if I can't get passed this "Devices and Printers" freeze/lock-up I'll have no choice but to bin it and buy a new one.
Any help would be hugely appreciated.
Cheers.