XPS M1530 freezing, please help!

Hey all,

I'm having problems with my 2-month old DELL XPS M1530 laptop.
It's just that often during a Vista session, the computer will just freeze up. Sometimes I can still open the start menu or the task manager, but that's about it. To shut-down, I have to press the power button (or the ctrl-(scrolllock x2)) thing. Moreover, sometimes the computer already crashes during the BIOS loading screen.

I once attempted to start in Safe-Mode, but the laptop froze before I even had the chance to log-in. These crashes occur every day, sometimes multiple times within the hour. I did a BIOS-diagnostic and a virus scan but both came out clean.
During these freezing-events, the hard drive shows no signs of activity.

I really don't know what can be causing this problem, and I'm getting pretty desperate since I reached the point where I can no longer trust my laptop anymore.
The two option I had in mind are:
-Vista compatibillity error
-HD problem


I noticed btw that the laptop will often crash during music-playback in WMP 10.

System specs are as follows:
-DELL XPS M1530
-MW Vista Home Premium 32-bit
-Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T7500@ 2,20 GHz 2,20 GHZ
-3070Mb Ram
-NVIDIA GeForce 8600M
-SAMSUNG HM320JI hard disk, 320GB

I already requested help from Dell support-forum twice, but as usual no-one replies there...

 

Alright, here are a few things to help...

1) Download HDTune and run a scan on your entire drive for bad sectors.
2) Use CHKDSK to scan the drive as well, AFTER BACKING UP YOUR DATA.
3) Download MemTest86+, burn to CD, and test your RAM for errors. Run the test for at least four "passes" or several (6-8) hours whichever is longer.
4) Download Notebook Hardware Control or some other utility to monitor notebook temps...it might be overheating.

Possible causes: HDD errors or RAM errors or overheating.

 

Thank you for the quick answer. I'm still following the steps so I don't have any results yet.
However, when my laptop crashed again earlier this day, I ran a BIOS diagnostic (again). This time, it came up with a Self-test failure of Hard-Drive 1.
I don't have the originial error message anymore, but during a second BIOS (to see if the problem was spotted again), the following came up:

Error Code 0146
Msg: Error Code 2000-0146
Msg: Hard-Drive 1 - self test log contains previous error(s).

I don't know whether these codes say anything about the original problem (it's all Latin to me, so to speak), and I haven't got a clue about how to access the log-file either.

However, does this error mean that the HDD is damaged?
And what would be best to do if it indeed is a HDD problem? Do I have to get a new Hard-Drive then?

 

Hi,
did you ever manage to get this problem sorted out? I've been having similar problems recently. Sometimes I only have I-tunes running or this morning it happened when using Skype. Pretty annoying...
I've had my xps m1530 for abotu 4-5 months and up until recently no issues with it. There's some Vista update recently and since I seem to be getting it these freeze-up's.
Thanks
Dave

 

I've had problems with my 1520. It would lock up and fail to shut down. I used the one of the latest video drivers from lap2go and it solved most of my problems.(the rest is vista related) Funny thing is I was up to date on the drivers from nvida.

 

Hey davidbasalla if your having freezing problems reboot and run a diagnostics check, it does take a while, (to do this, turn on your notebook while holding down the fn key simultaneously), thats what i did, my diagnostics check told me my hdd had errors just like the OP, and i notified dell, they rang me back and said my hdd needed to be replaced. Otherwise i would have carried on using my notebook unknowingly, (I also ran a program called smart defender which diagnosed that my hard disk is at a state where it could fail any time!)

 

Not to bring up an old thread, but my 1530 was acting up. Would just freeze periodically. I had to force a reboot by holding down the power button.

So I did as fullycharged suggested and ran the PSA Diagnostics, as described here.

I received an error code 2000-0142. This is a faulty hard drive error. Dell is sending me a new imaged hard drive, should arrive tomorrow.

Not the solution I was hoping for, but at least I will have time to back up my data to external drives. Hope this helps someone!

 

Hello Folks,

Just adding my 2 cents worth on my experience.
I was given a Dell Inspiron 1520 installed w/Vista to recover from a 2000-0146 error. It would appear the drive lost its boot sector and both FAT tables because I could not read any of data on the system Partition of the drive after removing it from the Notebook and using a USB drive adapter hooked up to my Desktop.

I could read the recovery Partition but could never get it to run because the initial boot sector was already corrupt. I tried to run HD-Tune and it failed. Then I tried "Get My Data back" (which is an awesome recovery tool) and it too failed. The drive was toast and all data was lost.

I ended up replacing the drive, reinstalling the OS using the Reinstallation disk from Dell, then all the drivers the Notebook came with. Then updated the Bios, and ran all the updates from Microsoft, then all the drivers from Dell related to this Model. It was a lengthy process but, needed to be done. The owner had lost everything and didn't backup anything.

That was my story. I hope some of you have a better outcome then myself.

Hope this helps.

I wonder if there is a bad run on drives.

Dan

 

Update your BIOS and get rid of Vista.