Dell laptops are reportedly suffering from a nasty bug that causes repeated crashes, and this time it’s not Windows 11’s fault – here’s what’s causing it and how to fix it

There are several reports of a nasty bug affecting Dell laptops
It’s apparently caused by a recent update to Dell’s SupportAssist app
Affected laptops keep crashing every half hour or so, but there is a fix in either removing or disabling the offending support services

If you’ve got a Dell laptop running Windows 11 and you’ve been experiencing regular crashes every half hour or so, you’re by no means alone – and luckily, there seems to be a solution.

Following a tip from a reader, Neowin discovered that there are several reports on Dell’s community forum complaining that the laptop maker’s SupportAssist software is flawed and causes crashes where the PC completely freezes with a Black Screen of Death (BSOD).

There are a number of reports on Dell’s forum, and also on Reddit, noting that the problem affects fleets of PCs (in business), as well as individual laptops, including Alienware gaming notebooks (there are a few cases mentioned, including for example an Alienware M16 R2).

How to deal with Dell SupportAssist crashes

Dell XP 15 on a purple mat during our tests

(Image credit: Dell)

There are several reports of laptop owners or IT administrators who have solved this problem, and they all come back to the same solution: removing SupportAssist or disabling the service.

If you’re reaching the end of your tether due to crashes and want to get rid of SupportAssist, it’s as simple as going into Settings and going to the Apps panel, then to the ‘Installed Apps’ list. Scroll down to find Dell SupportAssist, click the ellipsis (three dots icon) on the right and select ‘Uninstall’.

You’re not quite done though, as there’s also a Dell SupportAssist Remediation app – which many actually point to – so you’ll need to remove that as well. Some people suggest removing everything related to SupportAssist, which means also dropping a third service, the Dell SupportAssist OS Recovery Plugin.

Once you’re done with them, restart your PC and hopefully you’ll find that the crashes stop happening. If you’ve only removed the main app and not all three, and that doesn’t fix the problem, it’s worth trying to ditch them all. Keep in mind that without SupportAssist, you must manually search for and apply all laptop firmware updates (from Dell’s support site).

You can always reinstall these apps at a later date when we hear from Dell that SupportAssist is fixed. Of course, keep in mind that we haven’t heard anything official from Dell yet, so this problem is unconfirmed – and ditto for the solution. But from most reports, removing SupportAssist works (although note that I’ve seen the odd comment complaining about a laptop still crashing even after ditching the app).

Another path that some suggest is to try simply disabling Dell SupportAssist Remediation (instead of engaging in any uninstallation). Do this by typing the following in the Windows 11 taskbar search box:

services.msc

Press enter and this will open the service panel showing all local running services so you will need to scroll down and find Dell SupportAssist Remediation. Right-click on it, then select ‘Properties’, and in the panel that appears, in the drop-down menu called ‘Startup Type’, select ‘Disabled’ (you can re-enable it later by changing it back to ‘Automatic’).

Neowin also notes that this bug has apparently appeared before — last year, in fact, when another cure was found to work. This involved opening SupportAssist and running the ‘scan hardware’ option and after this process was complete it seemed to do the trick (although it may take a while).

In the meantime, we’ll just have to wait to hear from Dell about what might be going on here, but there’s an obvious irony that an app that facilitates tech support is causing a show-stopping issue on some laptops.

As one Redditor put it: “The irony that SupportAssist is the cause. I’m so glad I’m no longer in IT.”