M17xR3 - vertex 3 bootloop

Hello everyone. Hope someone can help me with a major issue.
Here are my specs
M17xR3
CPU: i7-2860qm
GPU: GTX580M
RAM: 16GB Hyperx at 1600mhz
Display: 3d truelife full hd thingy
disks: one vertex 3 120Gb in slot 0 and a vertex 2 480Gb in slot 1

The machine shipped with 6Gb of stock Ram and a 720 Gb scorpio black 7200rpm disk. I swapped out the ram and disks. Cloned the original disk to the vertex 3. Original sata setting in the bios was raid. I am now using the vertex 3 and 2 with the same sata raid settings, but the disks are not "raided" together, ie, they are seperate os and data disks.

Everything worked fine for a few days, then over the weekend I noticed very strange behaviour. The only analogy I can think of is : Its like an old car. Really hard to start, first thing after a few hours. But once you get it up and running, its fine.

ie: after shutdown for a few hours, its really really difficult to boot up. I press the button, the lights come on, I hear the optical drive buzz a little... then they shut off, come on again, the optical drive buzzes... this repeats for a few times.
Then I get the alienware head loading up the bios, it comes to the "Starting Windows" screen, but the four colored dots never appear and the machine is hung. I have to hold the power button down until the machine shuts off. Then I repeat. Sometimes it goes into the lights on-lights off routine again, sometimes it goes back to being able to load the bios. But I have to repeat this step a few times until I see the four colored dots coming together. Occasionally after I have signed in, the machine just shuts off again, and I have to repeat, but most of the time, once the colored dots appear, its ok.

Heres the thing. Once I have been using the machine for a few minutes, I can shutdown and restart without any problem whatsoever! This is driving me nuts!

I tried to put the original disk in once, and it booted up without any issue, which leads me to feel that the problem lies in the vertex 3 somehow. I have already flashed the firmware of both vertex 3 and 2 to the latest available versions, but the problem persists. I am thinking of doing a full wipe and change the sata to ahci and reinstall everything, but does anyone think that the raid-ahci thingy might be the culprit? raid on the original disk seems to work fine.

Really hope some of you can share any insights to this.

Thanks in advance
Derek

 

Vertex 3 in slot 1, this is important. Leave the Vertex 2 out. BIOS to AHCI, change boot to secondary first and do a clean install. Put Vertex 2 in slot 0 once all is done.

To compare run CDM now and after you swapped drives, clean install and installed all drivers.

Since you can boot fine with the original HDD the Vertex is a suspect.

 

Thanks for the quick reply!

Yeah, I concur that the vertex 3 is the suspect. Could you share why you think vertex 3 in slot 1 is important?

Tried to put the vertex 3 in slot 1 and vertex 2 in slot 0 just now. Changed the boot to secondary first, but problem persisted. Of course, hadn't done the whole change to ahci and reinstall yet.

Currently backing up all data before attempting the clean install.

 

Port 0 has SATA 3 problems thats why. Its not always SATA 3.

Just leave the Vertex 2 out for now. Check OCZ website for the latest firmware and update that before the clean install.

Can you do a Crystal Disk Mark run for that Vertex 3 now so you have some numbers. Please post them here.

Once asked during the Win 7 setup, delete all partitions and format the drive.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/614335-first-clean-install.html

Read that aswell, there is a list of drivers that you will need. There might be some newer one's on the Dell support site, just take a look.

 

Damn, sorry, already started the fresh install. Will do the cdm after...
Hope this solves the problem!

 

Is that true? that the port 0 has problems? currently i have my OCZ Solid 3 on port 0 and getting occasional bsods and problem booting up sometimes. Do you guys think moving it to port 1 will fix problems? or is it just really the sandforce controller

 

Just swap it and change the boot order to secondary first and see how it goes. You did follow all the instructions regarding SSD installation right?

 

Ok will do, also I don't think I did followed a guide regarding a SSD. All i saw was driver installation and etc. I did a fresh install of win7 using the alienware cd + the driver guide.

 

Your BIOS is still on RAID? I had problems with that mode with my M4 and Vertex 3. Maybe you need to change that and clean install again.

 

Actually I set it to AHCI before doing a clean install on my ssd via slot 0

 

Ok so you only have to swap drives then.

 

Sigh... The problem persists.

Logged a call to Dell support. Will try to get an engineer in to do a mobo swap.

 

I was wrong... The problem happens with the original HDD as well...

 

With the original HDD you have to change AHCI to RAID.

 

Did that. The problem is that it doesnt even get to touching the disk yet. The lights on the computer light up, then it shuts off again and repeats. Bios doesnt even load. After a while of that, when bios does finally load, can i finally change to raid. But when i save and exit, sometimes it goes back to its lights on-light off thingy. Sometimes it goes on, but hangs at the "starting windows" screen...

 

Time to call Dell I guess.

Just put the original HDD in port 0, change mode to RAID. Just leave the SSD's out. So its original.

 

Dell technician came over today. Changed mobo. Just as he was closing everything up, he decides to poke in the ac adapter to test, and the little blue ring around the plug went off. Laptop unbootable. So.... Started removing everything again, until just the mobo was in the chassis. Poke in plug, light stays on. Stick the gpu in, light goes out. Stick the plug into the old mobo, light stays on. With the gpu in the old mobo, light goes out. So now the gpu is suspect. He's returning either tomorrow or friday with a new graphics card.

 

A bit of an aside but I have to confirm. I thought the issues with the Slot 0 were addressed in one of the BIOS updates? I've read a few Dell forums and even the SSD installation instructions on here mentioned that this has been fixed.

How can I check if the slot is running at 3 Gb/s or 6Gb/s ? I did the HDD benchmarks and the numbers look comperable to waht the manufacturer stated but just to be sure.

 

If you have RST installed it will show 3GB/s or 6GB/s. Sometimes it goes up and down.

 

Was i'm training today, so i left the machine in the office.Dell tech came over again and swapped out the graphics card.called me to tell me that everything was working fine now.came over after the training... Problem is STILL there! Argh! So mad!
Going to get normal non Kingston hyper x ram to try... I mean, cmon, its got a brand nw mobo AND graphics card! What else could be wrong?!

 

RESOLVED:

#@%(*!(&%$#&^(@%%^#(^&(
it was the bloody ram.

Changed the hyper x out for 16gb of standard 1333 ram, and it booted on first attempt! grrrr...

Anyone using 1600 hyper x ram? 16gb of it, filling all four slots? How do you do it? Do you set anything in the bios manually?

 

XMP Profile 2, and specify 1600, works great.

 

But, that's exactly what I did! And I kept getting that damned irritating bootloop fiasco! And only when the machine was cold!

With standard kingston 1333 16gb of ram, no issues at all! Grrr....

Did you have all four slots filled with hyper x?

 

You could try the following.

Insert 1 stick of RAM, boot laptop, if all goes well that stick is ok. Add a second stick, boot laptop, if all goes well that stick is ok. And so on and so on.

You might have a bad RAM stick.

How is the Vertex 3 running?

 

Crap, dunno how to upload images.
I'll type out the cdm readings I got.

vertex3
seq read: 261.5
seq write: 131.2
512k read: 242.9
512k write: 132.9
4k read: 25.01
4k write: 40.07
4kqd32 read: 153.8
4kqd32 write: 103.8

in comparison, the vertex 2 got

seq read: 220.0
seq write: 141.4
512k read: 207.4
512k write: 139.4
4k read: 18.53
4k write: 13.46
4kqd32 read: 76.57
4kqd32 write: 42.17

Do these numbers look ok to you? Newbie to all this benchmarking.

 

Numbers look really low to me.

Let me find a CDM Vertex 3 bench for you.

You can upload your images at photobucket.

 

Can you open RST and see what the speed is on port 1 where the Vertex 3 is installed. Should be 6GB/s not 3GB/s.

This is what you should see, a little lower on the write speeds since the 240GB version is 20MB/s higher then the 120GB version.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachments/alienware-m17x/64914d1304647463-any-r3-owners-have-vertex-3-stories-share-crystaldiskmark_azureal_240gb_vertex_3_raid_mode_mx17r3.png

 

Really sorry, what's RST?

 

Intel Rapid Storage Technology.

 

Right...

Did this last night, it was showing 3gbs. So, swapped the disks around, and found I couldn't access my d drive. I mean, it was as though it was there after booting up, but after about 5 minutes, its as though someone just yanked out the drive from the machine! It just dissapeared from everything, rst, computer management, explorer, device manager, everything! Ended up putting the vertex 3 back into slot 0 and vertex 2 into slot 1. Now its as you say, once in a while, I get 6gbps, once in a while, its 3...

I hope this gets resoved via bios update soon... sigh....

 

Should be in slot 1. Leave the Vertex 2 out and see what happens.

 

Leaving the vertex 2 out makes the vertex 3 sata 3 all the time in slot 1, which is what we all want. However, the vertex 2 is the 480gb version, holding all my data. I really need that in there, but the moment I plug it into slot 0, all sorts of grief heads my way...

 

Call Dell again, this time explaining this hdd slot 0 not always sata 3 issue. He adviced me to switch power settings to performance, instead of balanced. Did that (skeptically), and after 2 reboots I am still on sata 3, 6gbps. Will keep monitoring over the next few boots...

Could it really be this simple? Still feeling quite skeptical, but hopeful...

 

Sigh... This is the 5th boot, and its in sata 2 mode...

 

Buy a 750GB HDD and replace the Vertex 2.

 

How about this. I get 2 x 480gb vertex 3, and run them in raid0. You think I will run into problems with that setup?

 

omg... anyone using kingston hyper X SSD and got this issue? im goin to buy the kingstone ssd drive.. -_-

 

Well its doenst make sense running SSD's in RAID.

If port 0 still is buggy with SATA 3 speeds I would just buy a 750GB or 1TB HDD and place that in port 0 for the data.

1 more thing to try, swith the interposers and see what happens.

Not sure if the Vertex 2 needs the LPM fix to run without problems.