New Dell Inspiron 1520 Issues

I recently purchased a Dell Inspiron 1520 and I have 2 related issues.

The hard drive I have is a Samsung HM250JI.

The first problem I had was that I was getting the hard drive "clicking" every so often (which seems to be a problem many people are having.)

After doing some research, mostly on this site, I tried downloading a recommended notebook hardware control/. This stopped all clicking, but now I have another, possibly minor, but very annoying problem.

Has anyone noticed that when they are idle or have a screensaver up that when you bump the mouse or hit a button, your desktop appears briefly (for about a half a second) and then the screen goes black for another second, and then you are good to go?

Well, with the new control, now the longer I'm idle, the longer it takes for my computer to recover from idle.

For example, when it sits overnight, I wake up, bump the mouse, the screen briefly appears, then goes black, I wait for 7 or so minutes, screen goes back to normal.

This might be a setting I changed or that this program adjusted. I really am not sure. Any ideas or fixes? Thanks.

 

i would suggest uninstalling the progrma and to see if it still happens. i it doesnt get a new hard drive from dell to stop the clicking

 

Vista or XP? This is a big problem for XP (IMO) which seemed to have been cleared up with Vista. If you're running 3rd part apps, they could be slowing that wake-up process down.

 

Thanks guys.

I have vista.

All of the hard drives have the clicking issue is what I learned, so getting a new one won't fix the clicking.

 

you don't need to have notebook hardware control running for the clicking to stop.

once you set the APM Mode for your harddrive (254 or 255) it will stay at that value until you turn off the pc... even a reboot wont change the setting.

i use the windows version of hdparm for setting that APM parameter to stop the clicking... it's a one click solution now, that can also be automatically started during boot-up.

 

I really am not too smart when it comes to computers, so I'm not quite understanding what you just said.

How do I adjust the APM mode? Do I need hdparm and if so what is hdparm?

My apologies if that's a stupid question, but that's why I'm here. Hah. Thanks for the help.

 

what you did by using notebook hardware control was changing the apm (=advanced power management) level of your harddrive. by default, that clicking sound comes from read/write-head of the harddrive, which is put into parking position. when you set the apm-level to 254 or 255 (which you did by using notebook hardware control), then the head doesn't get parked anymore, thus no more clicking noise.

and once that apm value is changed, it stays at that value until the computer is powered off, because then that value is resetted.

so in your case you don't need to have notebook hardware control running all the time, thus eliminating your problem with the recover from idle.


and that hdparm is just another programm to control the harddrive. i use that program to change the apm level at startup.

 

So, what do you recommend I do?

Should I just shutdown that program after I start up the computer or is there an easier way to keep the APM at 254-255?

Should I delete that program and instill hdparm? If so, where do I get it? Thanks.

 

since you run vista all i can say is, shutdown the notebook hardware control or wait for someone to help you troubleshoot your problem.

i could post you the guide to get hdparm to autostart under xp, but that wouldnt be of much use with vista and its crappy uac.

i got vista here on my hdd aswell, but i dont use it... under vista hdparm needs to be run with administrative privileges, and i didn't bother yet how to make hdparm run on autostart then.

good luck.

 

Someone also recommended HD Tune as an alternative for notebook hardware control. Any thoughts?

 

I don't see an option in hdtune to set the apm level, but if someone told you it works by just running it, why not try that...

 

I ran it, but I don't know what the point of it is. Can you (or anyone) tell me what this means:

 

Can anyone draw any conclusions from that image? I can't believe no one has resolved the clicking issue for vista users. Insane.

 

well hdtune is a harddrive diagnostic and benchmark tool, so what you see in that picture are performance measurements of your harddrive.

i guess what the person who recommended that to you ment was, just let the programm run in the background and see if that stops the clicking.

try it by disabling the auto start for notebook hardware control (in its settings menu), then power off your pc. now let hdtune just run in the background and see if it clicks or not

i'd be surprised if that actually works, though...

 

HDtune did not work. I'm looking for an alternative to the notebook hardware control to stop the clicking. Anyone? *chirp chirp*

 

Hello, i was buy my Dell 1520 in Russia and changed hdd to hm250ji. I haved same problem with the sound before i installed NHC (they have special version for dell, try to search in google). NHC was fix the problem. Samsung also have a special patch for this hard drive, you can find it on the support site (samsunghdd.com).