Alienware 15 USB 3.0 issue

Hi everyone.

The moment I got my laptop I did a clean install of windows 8.1 in order to install my SSD. I downloaded and installed all drivers I wanted. No problem everything fine, except for my USB slots.

You see, I have a USB 3.0 external hard drive. It works properly, however whenever I watch a video/movie that is on the external hard drive, my hard drive get's disconnected for a second, and gets back connected after a few minutes of starting the video. Causing the video to stop and I have to reopen the video/movie file.

I've googled this issue, it's a common problem with USB 3.0 hard drives. I tried everything they suggested. I disabled USB selective suspending through the power options. I've installed my external hard drives 3rd party software, and tried setting the sleep Harddrive after X time to 8 hours, or unlimited, both didn't help.

I created a registry specific for my hard drives, drive ID to give it a hard coded sleep time after 400 minutes, but that din't help either.

I had this issue on my old alienware M14x r1 too. But on that the issue was solved when I installed the USB 3.0 driver on the alienware m14X driver page.

In my case there is an USB3.0 host controller driver on the alienware 15 driver website, but I cannot install it. Since it's only for up to windows 7. apparently it's not required for windows 8.1, and it's the exact same driver as on the official Intel website, cannot be installed on windows 8.1

I tried to install the same driver I used on my alienware m14x r1. It did install and work, but still didn't solve my issue.

I'm out of options here. Anyone else who can help me out with this?

 

Make sure there aren't any firmware updates for your drive on the drive's manufacturer site.

 

There is no new frimware for it except only one for MAC, but I am not running on mac, so no use for me.
It does however has it's own Dashboard software, that many people, including me don't like. I installed it back, and am using it with that now, see if that will make a difference.

Thanks for your response.

 

I'm still having this issue.
Installing the hard drive it's own software didn't help. I think It's because I did a fresh install of windows I'm missing some drivers. Because I'm pretty sure the list of drivers available on the official alienware 15 support website, isn't the complete list of the ones installed on a new bought system.

This really sucks. Every time I watch a video/movie that is in my hard drive, my hard drive disconnects. And there isn't a usb 2.0 slot on the alienware so I could at least plug it in there when I want to watch a video.

 

Installing Intel Chipset driver 10.0.27 with exe script command /overall fixed this issue for me. Now it does the whole connect/disconnect with smart phones only but USB sticks & EXT HDDs are safe

 

Where can I find that version? on dell's website you can only find 10.0.20. And what do you mean with exe script command?

 

U will find it on intel website.

When u download make a shortcut on desktop and open the properties of that shortcut and after the .exe" add /OVERALL so it completely rewrites everything

 

this **** is insane !!! i need to fix this **** ! 1 YEAR AND NO FIX!!!

 

I use a usb 2.0 extender on top of the 3.0. And use the 3.0 only when transferring large data.

I don't like this solution but it works for now