Zoom Causes Network "Crash" for Specific Dell Laptops

[JRG_Jeff]

We have three employees who all recently got Dell  XPS 13 9310 2-in-1 laptops.  No one else in the company has these laptops.  

This is how to replicate the issue:

• User has a Dell  XPS 13 9310 2-in-1 laptop with Windows 10 21H1 with updated OS, drivers and firmware.
• User with the above laptop joins a meeting with audio and video (webcam).
• User unmutes and begins to talk.
• The problem begins within 3 seconds of the user talking or transmitting audio.
• This has also been replicated when a user shares a web page with a video.  As soon as both audio and video transmitted the problem occurs.  It doesn't matter if the video and audio are coming from a webcam+mic or a video being shared.

Characteristics of the problem:

• From the perspective of the other attendees - the affected user unmutes, says a few words, and then their video freezes and audio stops.
• From the perspective of the affected user
  • ~3 seconds into sending audio and video the Zoom client becomes unresponsive (mouse clicks don't register within the application), but Windows never detects the application has "no responding".  So no application crashes are logged in the Windows Application Event Log.
  • As soon as the Zoom client becomes unresponsive, all network traffic to/from the affected laptop is halted.  The laptop can ping it's IP and the loopback address, but not it's local gateway.
  • At around 10 seconds into the problem, the Zoom window closes, and the smaller, index-card-sized Zoom startup window pops up with the loading indicator spinning. 
  • At 10~20 seconds into the Zoom loading window, network traffic is resumed.  The gateway and other network and Internet IPs become pingable again.
  • Another ~10 seconds (roughly 30-40 seconds into the problem) and the Zoom window reopens re-joining the meeting where the issue occurred.

Things we have tried:

• Connecting to various different networks both wired and wireless
• Updating all device drivers and firmware
• Reinstalling Zoom
• Reinstalling Windows
• Switching out USB docking stations using different makes and models
• Switching different audio and video devices although it doesn't matter the source of the video and audio

I suspect this is a problem with a codec or some other compress issue, but I never see a driver or application crash logged in the Windows event viewer.  It's as if the Zoom client halts ALL network traffic while it restarts from being able to handle the audio and video.

Again, this ONLY happens with the Dell  XPS 13 9310 2-in-1 laptops.  We have a myriad of different users on different hardware including other Dell laptops, but these users on these laptops are having this issue.

Any help is GREATLY appreciated.

[CWSteyn]

Good Day

Have this issue with the Dell XPS 13 9310 2-in-1 and Zoom been resolve ?

I have the same problem. 

[JRG_Jeff]

Unfortunately, I don't yet have a solution, but I do have more information.

I ended up giving our users who had these laptops different models, and they seem to be working fine with those.  I personally run a meeting with about 20 people each Monday morning, and I decided to use one of these laptops at my house for these meetings.  I used the same docking station that was used by the people who previously had the issue, and guess what....

It worked flawlessly.  I even let my wife use it for a class on Zoom she was taking...no issue there either.

My best guess is there is something in the user's environment at their house that is not present in mine.  Perhaps a different network?  I have a Netgear Nighthawk at my house, and one of the users has a mesh wireless system.  Maybe there's some sort of EMF interference.  I haven't yet found it.  

The problem was easily reproducible at someone else's house, but not mine.

One other note.  They never had this issue in Microsoft Teams, WebEx, or GoToMeeting, only Zoom.

[Vach]

I have an entire team that has brand new Dell Precision 5560s (i9 processor, 32gb ram, nvidia RTX a2000 graphics cards) and whenever they start sharing their screen or someone else starts sharing their screen Zoom freezes, then crashes (not logging a crash in the Windows logs) then a white window opens and it tries to reconnect to the meeting.  After 3 crashes in the same meeting it gives an error ( code 104101).  Extremely frustrating.

[MGA-Logins]

We have the exactly same issue on all of our Dell Precision, brand new 5560 and old 5530. Zoom meeting crushes as soon as flipping the opening applications over the share-screen prompt window on Zoom share.