DELL Studio XPS 1640 Strange Sounds

Actually, I just realized--doesn't the hdparm command need to be run on every boot for it to work? It's not like a setting that stays... so a LiveCD wouldn't really help, would it?

Just tried Parted Magic and I was able to use hdparm successfully on the LiveCD. But again when I boot back into Windows it's back to its usual setting. I really don't know what could be causing it to not be detected as an APM-enabled HDD...

By the way, in my Device Manager, the drive is listed under Disk drives as ST950042 0ASG SCSI Disk Device. Is this normal? Isn't it just SATA?

 

Using the live disk has proved that your nvidia chipset allows you to modify the required setting. Being able to view your firmware revision & not hearing the sound while you were there should also confirm that you're suffering the exact same problem as us on the 1640.

With device manager listing the drive as a SCSI drive it makes me assume that you have wrong/generic drivers installed. Sdparm can be used with scsi drives but the features differ & you have a sata drive... May be a consideration tho.

 

I figured it out. The NVIDIA SATA Controller drivers were the problem. They incorrectly report the SATA drive as SCSI drive. I uninstalled and then deleted the NVIDIA SATA Controller drivers and Windows 7 installed generic Microsoft drivers. After that, I was able to change APM.

The NVIDIA SATA drivers are faster and newer than the generic MS drivers, but if they disable features that you would otherwise have, I'll settle for the generic.

 

Most importantly... Annoyance free?

 

Indeed. Thanks for your help

 

No problem, I'm glad you've got it sorted. It certainly had me twitching at times.

 

I did the hdamp fix, and it worked just fine..
But I am wondering is this supposed to be like that?! cause some other seagate hd don't have such problem..I still think it is a factory fault, I want to call dell, but I am hesitant for several reasons..one of them the likelihood of getting refurbished hd,and the other thing they will probably ask me to send them back my laptop, which I won't.

 

It's not supposed to be like that at all. Seagate have corrected the issue with a firmware revision which is only available through OEMs. It'd certainly be good to know whether DELL have any intention of releasing it.

& glad to hear that the fix worked.

 

yesterday mine started doing this noise too, it didn't do it so far and yesterday it did it really frequently, it became really annoying.. so far today it didn't do that, but if it will start again i gonna really need to try the method mentioned here..

 

This thread certainly sounds disheartening for I just ordered my SXPS 16 yesterday. Hopefully my is okay

 

I called dell for that..and they are sending me another Hard Disk! I thought that'd be the best since it is still under warranty. They assured me that this new part will not produce any clicking noise..lets wait and see

 

It's really not supposed to be like this, but speaking from much painful experience with Dell, I try to avoid part replacements with this company at all costs. More often than not you'll end up with an endless spiral of replacements and wasted time.

 

my mistake, I now know that I replaced my one year warranty with 90 days for my hdd ,anyway I really needed to replace it ,since the situation without hdapm started to get ugly more frequent clicking noise accompanied with some scratching noises..well I am using the refurbished drive right now lets wait and see

 

ah okay, keep us posted!

3 times recently, mine made the clicking noise WITH a very light 'beeping' sound from the HDD! scary.

LOL been busy, yet to try the fix.

 

Refurbished & only 90 days guarantee? There's no way I'd go for that on a HDD, not to mention the inconvenience...

I sincerely hope it serves you well.

To everyone else with the problem - use hdparm. There's no physical defect with these drives, it's simply the firmware & easily compensated for. No waiting, no reinstalling & no lame 90 day warranty on a 2nd hand part...

 

i followed rockhopper's instructions and so far the problem seems to be fixed, thx for this

 

the refurbished drive has the same clicking noise!!! my advice is to follow rockhopper's instructions for using hdarpm, cause simply dell won't help you much,since the major problem comes from seagate.

 

oh no i heard it again.. i checked in cmd, and it gave 0x8080 value back which means it wasn't running.. then i typed the "hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda" command and after this it returned the correct value (0x80fe). so it seems autorunning at logons doesn't work perfectly for me..

 

Have you been running it with admin privileges?
btw, guys I am so returning the refurbished hdd, well done dell & seagate..can't wait to buy new hdd in future I hope it will be ssd .

 

Scorpeeon, you need to look at your task scheduler & ensure that you not only run it as admin but select 'run as admin' too. I'm sure you'll see non zero results & errors in the log section.

 

thx, i'll try. my acc is pretty much an admin acc for sure, but now i clicked to this "run as admin" option, deleted and created the task again, hope i'll work

 

I ran the hdparm fix as stated earlier in the posts, but my drive still does the strange tick tock sound.

 

If you're still getting the sounds after running the fix, you may have set the APM to 254. At this level, the APM feature is still active. Set it to 255 to turn it off entirely.

 

If you hear the sounds, check the APM level to ensure it's not a scheduling issue. If it's not a scheduling issue, use the above advise.

One thing I've noticed on Linux is that if the laptop goes into sleep mode, APM will return to default on wake. This is easily sorted but I don't know if the same is true in Windows or how to go about it at this time.

 

i investigated my problem a bit further and found out that normally it works and it shows the correct value (0x80fe) but anytime when i close the lid (or put my computer to sleep in any way), the next time i wake it up it returns to the default (0x8080) bad setting.. any suggestions how to solve this?

 

i did some testing... try setting your power management at the bottom right, the notification area, to "Performance".. i did this and the sound went away...
hope this helps

 

I've not been using Windows much yet but in Linux I use pm-utils to run hdparm on resume with the following script:

/etc/pm/sleep.d/50hdparm

Code:

#!/bin/sh
# Restore APM settings after hibernation/sleep

case "$1" in
        resume|thaw)
		hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda
		;;
esac

Is there a resume event in the task scheduler for Windows? I'll certainly have a look the next time I boot Vista.

 

Some useful info: http://www.xpmediacentre.com.au/com...e/31289-auto-run-program-after-resume-s3.html

I don't use any power saving features in Vista so I've no use for it, it appears to be what you need tho.

 

I got my xps 1640 yesterday and am hearing sounds too.
I am running windows vista home premium 64 bit SP1 and also have the 500 gb hdd.
correct me if I am wrong. Is the sound referred in this topic same as the one that I hear whenever the hard drive LED symbol glows.(on the front left next to the bluetooth and wifi).
I hear this sound all the time.
Please confirm asap.
Thanks.

 

yes, look at the first post and download the sound file to confirm you have the same sound; most likely, you do. Indeed, the LED lights up for that one second until the "click" is done. (technically, starts with a clunk, ends with a click)

for your convenience: http://omploader.org/vMjU2eQ/clapclick.wav (by rockhopper)

 

contacted dell support on this click sound issue and they wanted me to remove the harddrive and switch on the computer to see if that sound persists.I havent yet removed the drive. need to do that.

 

If I were you, I'd listen to my sound recording & use hdparm to view the drive details/firmware revision (shown earlier in this thread). If it sounds similar & you have the same drive & firmware, then you have a fairly definitive answer. You can then tell them you sat infront of a black screen for an hour & heard nothing...

 

The dell support made me run the diagnostics tests and the tests returned nothing and he said that the system is alright.
I also downloaded the HDInspectorPortable software and when i checked the drive properties it said Reliability 80%. what exactly does that mean.How much to trust that software.
I downloaded the HDparm but did not really know what to with that and went ahead with the HDInspectorPortable which was mentioned in another thread.
Now am not too sure what to do about this.

 

This isn't a hardware fault, it's purely the firmware (mis)configuration. If the drive is otherwise good, it should pass diagnostics. I've no experience with HDInspectorPortable & can't find its project page - infact I can't find anything but warnings about that program...

Look here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5271635&postcount=33

If your firmware & model numbers match I'd assume you've the same issue. Then progress to check & set the APM: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5271119&postcount=30

If that stops the sounds, schedule it to start for each startup/log-in. Example here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5265385&postcount=22

If you want further assistance from Dell, I'd request the firmware update that Seagate released to them some time ago...

 

i just tried this and now the problem seems to be all the way fixed
great thx 2 rockhopper
so, the important part from there:

"1. Open task sheduler [press windows key, type task, click on task scheduler at the top of the menu list]
2. In Actions [menu or right pane] click 'new task'
3. In General tab, give your task a name
4. In Trigger tab, click 'new'
5. Choose 'on an event' in the top drop-down list.
6. Choose 'custom' radio button
7. Click on the 'new event filter' button that now appears.
8. For event level, choose 'information'
9. In 'event logs' drop-down menu, choose windows logs > system. Put a tick next to 'system' only
10. Click on the text 'All event ID's' [the text will clear] and insert 1
11. Click ok
12. In the 'Actions' tab, choose the program you want to start by clicking 'new'
13. In the 'new action' window, use the browse button to navigate to the .exe of the program you want to run. If you have a shortcut on your desktop for the program, you can simply choose that and scheduler will extract the path from the shortcut.
14. [optional] Add -fullscreen to the 'arguments' box if you want your program to start full screen and it supports this switch [argument]"

i added this too beside the "at log on" trigger and now it's running all the time it's returning from sleep

 

tested it a bit more and found out it's still not a full solution, at least for me. it's fully working while on charge but when running it on battery, this task scheduler is just doing the job. it's theoretically running all the time when it should, but the value remains 0x8080 after either boot or resuming and i hear the clicking noise too afterward. when i run cmd and type in the command, it changes to the correct value and the noise disappears, but for some reason task scheduler can't do it automatically when running on battery, only when charging.

 

I contacted dell support again and showed the support person the posts in seagate,dell forums about this clicking sound and and told mine as well.He offered a replacement and also asked me if i can wait this week to get the firmware update if possible. i chose to wait . coz there are no other 500 gb harddrives available with free fall other than this seagate ones.

 

I don't find the clicking sound. How do you produce the sound ?

Instead, i got the sparking sound from the power adapter =(

 

Just thought I'd let you guys know that I successfully ran the the DE17 firmware update that I got from the Dell drivers & downloads for a different laptop on my 320gb drive. I'm pretty sure it won't work on the 500gb drives, but anyone with 320gb or smaller should be able to flash from the bootable iso. No clicking or pausing since I flashed it about 36 hours ago.

 

So they're finally releasing the firmware update? That would be great news.

 

I dunno... often the reps will say that to get you off their back. We'll have to wait and see if they'll actually release anything.

 

he said dell is aware of it and there might be a recall or something if it gets worse.but firmware upgrade is a possibility and is not confirmed as yet.

 

please see the first page of this thread.theres a wav file of the sound posted..

 

Just tested this & it just needs one extra step:

15. Under the 'conditions' tab, deselect options within the power section.

All seems to be fine on both AC & DC using sleep/suspend to RAM. Not tested with hibernation but will get back to you.

 

Woww, I thought I was crazy when this started happening to me. Last week I was in a recording session with Pro Tools and it happened as I was laying down a track, and I got a major error saying the drive had been disconnected and the audio data was lost.

I called up Dell (didnt know about this thread beforehand) and immediately got another drive. I installed the drive this morning and it all seems to be OK so far. I am running SXPS 16 with the 500 GB seagate 7200 rpm on vista 32. I figured the drive was slowly dying.

 

Hey guys, I seem to be having a similar problem (I've got the same model Dell Studio XPS 1640, but with the 512MB ATI and 500GB 5400rpm Seagate)...

This has happened twice in two days now...the second time it happened was approx. 12 hours after the first incident, and my computer is usually running all the time.

All of a sudden my harddisk starts making repeated clicking sounds (with an interval of about 0.5sec) and my computer becomes non-responsive (or atleast extremely slow, the mouse moves though) ... i don't think its a good idea to let this happen, so i hard reboot after about 10 secs...

SMART seems fine, no problems on chkdsk...i have currently used hdparm to set power management to 254...i'll see how that works out...

My computer is brand new...about a week old...and this pisses me off...

Should I get a replacement drive? How come the dell page for this model only has firmware for an Hitachi drive?

 

I probably wouldn't get it replaced, it seems to be a general issue with these hdd's unfortunately. =/ I doubt it means all of our hdd are dying or something.

 

From my own experience, they sent me a refurbished hdd, and according of what happened to me the new(reconditioned) hdd made the same clicking sounds, so... it depends on you whether you want to waste some time trying that option

 

From what I could see on this thread, very few people have actually experienced complete HDD failure after hearing the click (of death?) sounds. So can I just keep going like this and hope it'll be fixed by some firmware upgrade in the near future? (click-free for past 12 hours)

 

yea, no actual HDD failure for me, although some speculations I've read in the past got me freaked out for a bit, but now I don't think about it, really. man! if only they used better HDDs, the SXPS16 would be PERFECT!