m17x Free Fall Sensor...

I know there is a driver for the Free Fall Sensor (Accelarometer) on the Dell Driver's page but I am a tad confused.

The new hard drives I bought (BEKTs) don't have a free fall sensor in them (Only the BJKTs do). Is the Free fall sensor in the m17x itself?

I guess I am trying to figure out whether I need to install this driver seeing that my new HDDs don't have a built in free fall sensor...

 

The Free Fall Sensor aka ST MicroElectronics Accelerometer is integrated in your M17x, not in the harddisks itself and should operate independantly with any HDD. The driver can be found here directly or found under SATA drives:

Drivers and Downloads

 

yeah, I have the driver, I just wanted to make sure it would be ok to still install it. Right on Grim, thanks for the fast response

 

Yeah, install it nonetheless or you would always see an unknown device, in device manager, even the SSD guys can use it even if it's not used maybe

But don't ask me how and when this driver/mechanism kicks in, i actually don't want to know that and no one should probably.

 

I've had some BSOD issues, which I think were linked to the free-fall sensor.

A couple of weeks ago, my M17x had 2 BSODs in 24 hours, and at both times the computer was running but idle. I analyzed the dump file created by the second BSOD and found the crash occurred in iastor.sys (part of the Intel RAID driver) with an IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL exception code.

Anyway, I disabled my free-fall sensor driver and haven't had the issue come back since. I suspect that something tripped the sensor (maybe the cat?) and the software tried to park the drive heads, which the Intel drivers handled incorrectly and caused the BSOD.

If you do end up with random BSODs with this error code, try bringing up an admin mode command prompt and running the following command:

This will prevent the accelerometer driver from starting when you next reboot. To enable the driver again, change "disabled" to "demand".

 

Ah thanks for this info. I will give it a go I think.

I'm not sure if it is the free fall sensor thing causing my notebook to restart every single time i move it or accidently bump the table. It will just BAMM restart. Its so hard for me to move the notebook from room to room as well as I'm scared of it restarting on me.

Cheers.

 

same thing happening to me. i just need to know how i can open commant prompt but in admin mode. better check google lol

 

Never had any problem with mine. I have actually tried to 'set' it off. Didn't work. Needn't know to be honest. Just hope it works when/if needed.

 

Start > All Programs > Accessories > right-click on Command Prompt > Run As Administrator