Failing harddrive on XPS1340

Hi

I'm experiencing some strange problems with my XPS1340 and I think it might be related to a failing harddrive.

The computer hangs quite often during startup or if I am installing/running programs. However, it seems to handle file copying with no problems - at least for now.

When it hangs, the harddrive LED stays ON, but the computer doesn't freeze totally and no BSOD. I can still move the mouse, but I can't open any programs or browse through files. After a while I get a message that Windows is not responding and I have the option to terminate the process or wait for it to respond. I can't click on any, though.

The only thing to do is a hard reset, and then normally the computer boots with no problems. If it hangs during startup I have to do the hard reset again.

As mentioned - the problem seems to occur only when the computer is installing a program / opening a program / starting up. I have just copied about 20GB to the harddrive to test, and it did that with no problems at about 32MB/s. Also - I can do "light work" like typing (I'm typing this on the computer)

I have tried to format and do a complete reinstall AND - Windows installs just fine - the problems begin when I start to install all the programs.

So.. Is this harddrive related, or could it be something else??.. I really think it's weird...

I got the computer about six months ago and until now I haven't really had any problems. I'm running windows 7 64 bit and the harddrive is a Western Digital (WDC WD32 00BJKT-75F4T).

Any help is appreciated.

 

Try running some sort of HDD diagnostics? There might be something built into the 1340 BIOS, but otherwise you can probably find something from WD themselves. Failing all that, you can try the HDTune scanner too.

 

I've tried both WD diagnostics and the diagnostics tool embedded in the 1340 BIOS (testing videocard and memory as well)

None of them finds any errors... Could it be a driver issue? - i mean, since I can install windows without problems. Maybe the chipset drivers?

I used the upgraded one meant for win7 on the dell website but I'm not sure if the problems started then..

Also I used new Ricoh drivers for the card reader, but I cant see how that could be the problem.. Maybe I should try downgrading the chipset drivers..

 

I started a different thread here and it might seem to be similar problem, hopefully someone can clarify.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=432728

 

That really does sound like a failing hard drive. I was skeptical when I opened this thread up because often people think their hard drive is failing when it's not that at all.

The only other issue I've had with similar symptoms was once when Windows Update had downloaded some updates on my work laptop and I could not install them due to lack of admin rights. The downloaded updates hung out there for hours (this was Windows XP). After a few months I could see "svchost.exe" in the task manager shooting up to 100% and staying there, grabbing all my laptop's resources.

Other than the hard drive, I wonder if you've got a seriously mismatched driver or other driver /software issue.

I would take everything off that laptop, if you can, that you need. Then I would either format the hard drive or use Dell's recovery partition. If it hangs there you can be sure it's a hard drive problem.

The flip side of this is then you have to deal with Dell on the warranty. That won't be a fun experience after all that time you will be spending as I outlined above. They're going to make you jump through certain hoops through warranty support and their support structure works off Step A, Step B, Step C, regardless of anything you tell them that you've done, and, their steps will repeat some of what you've already done. It may be better in the interested of time and frustration to just to call them and do their index-card support process.

But I would watch the task manager see if you get anything jump up to 100% and just sit there for long periods.

 

Just use task manager (ctrl+shift+esc if everything is laggy), go to the performance tab and click "Resource Monitor." Select "Disk" and you will see graphs on the right. The top one is I/O, and the bottom is queue length. If that thing hits or goes over "1," you will start seeing issues with delays. At that point, you can trace which process is pegging the drive and see if it's the OS (indexing, snapshot maintenance, etc) or application (Defender, AV, defragger, etc). This will get you a lot faster to diagnosing your issue, as sometimes it's an application going haywire. Also, see if you can use an app like mentioned earlier to probe the S.M.A.R.T. data on the drive for faults.

 

I don't believe it is a HDD H/W problem because I checked all the data from HD Sentinel and nothing shows up out of the ordinary. I also took the WDC and placed the drive in an external SATA enclosure to test, nothing bad came back.

 

I've tried downgrading the chipset drivers, and so far no problems! I have not really stressed it yet, though.

I'll try to keep an eye on the task manager the next time I let it do some multitasking.


Thanks!

 

Mine has been up & running for 24 hours w/ the 10.3.0.42 of the SATA driver and I have not noticed any of the nvstor64 events. Hopefully this interim patch works until the next chipset upgrade. But it certainly would be nice for someone in the know to explain this. Someone suggested the newer drivers were just bad, but I have a hard time accepting that both revisions are bad without anyone noticing the effects.