Arghhh! 6130-HS harddrive + CDROM problems

D A M N. I ignored all the threads about Averatec problems and went ahead and bought one anyway. And in the beginning everything was fine and I put everyone elses problems down to bad luck.

Well 5 months later I'm having the same problems. Overheating isn't really an issue, although it does seem to get VERY warm even with my cooling mat, which has fans. Hmm, a hot summer in New York doesn't help.

But anyway, when I first got it I ran HD tune and got a maximum of 25MB/s or so, now it's down to 2.8 MB/s. I have no idea why this is. Not only that, but it refuses to boot up sometimes. I'll get the Averatec logo screen, then it goes to a black DOS screen with something that I can't quite remember but includes the words "MAC client address" and "DHCP" with a spinning slash cursor. So I hit CTRL-ALT-DEL and it fires up again, and mostly boots up although sometimes I get a crude DOS progress bar moving across the screen before the Windows XP logo comes up. And it takes so much longer to boot up now! PLUS - sometimes when it goes into standby, it takes a while to come out of it. I get a blank screen for a minute or two before the password entry box comes up.

I've tried everything from a defrag to 3 factory restores now, and still I have the same problems. All other HD Tune tests give positive results - no problems like read/write errors, anything like that.

And another thing! Doing a factory restore is so much more of a pain, because the CD drive seems to fail at the last minute. It'll get nearly to the end of one of the 3 discs and then I'll hear a clicking sound as it unsuccessfully attempts to read a file, then the whole process is screwed and I need to startover. The drive seems to scratch discs as well - my recovery CDs got so scratched from the drive I had to buy a CD repair kit. Totally annoying.

So what do you reckon? Do I need to send it back? Godd a m n, I just can't afford to be without my computer right now!

 

it sounds like your harddrive is dieing. Does HD tune still show your hard drive speed as around 3 megs/sec? that would explain the extremely slow response times you are getting. Out of curiosity, how long does the restore process take for you? It should only take around 15-20 minutes to complete. Someone else has posted about there 6130 doing something like this except his drive was clicking loudly and continuously.

 

Hi,

My guess is that you are definetly having hard drive problems. This could account for issues with the CDROM also as one bad device can effect all others on the same controller.

As for the recovery, let me give you a word of advice. Ditch it. Do an install from scratch with a windows XP home OEM cdrom. You will be much happier. You may also have a corrupted image, which can account for your system instability also.

The CD's getting scratched shouldnt happen. they should be floating in the retention mech. I would check to see if the spiral in the middle looks at all bent. Also, put a disk in and spin it with your finger. See if you can hear it. You might want to consider going out and buying a piece of velvet or some microfiber material. Cut it out to match the circular pattern of your rom and use a SMALL amount of school glue to put it on. Dont use any crazy glue becuase the fumes can destroy electrical components.

As far as the heat is concerned, you should expect this from this processor. The northwood P4 is just a **** hot CPU. Nothing averatec can do about it. However... I (voided my warranty to mind you) pulled out the heatsink and Low and Behold, somebody had CAKED the paste onto the cpu. Most know, this can act as an insulator if to much is applied, cpu stays hotter because it cant transfer the heat efficently.

I cleaned it off, picked up some Arctic Silver compound from a local online retailer, put it on and it lowered my cpu temps by about 8 degrees. It was still hot though, and like i said, nothing you can really do about it.

 

It does sound like HD problems - possibly heat related. I also agree with jfinnican in ditching the image restore form Averatec. I would perform a clean install from Windows XP disc. You may even want to format the HD prior to the fresh install. This way you'll be sure that nothing software-wise on the disc is the culprit.

If all that fails and you still have slow response times with your HD, do you have a spare 2.5" notebook drive lying around? If you do, you might try installing and formating it and installing WinXP. If that siginificantly improves the performance you'll know the answer was the HD.

About 3 months after I purchased my 6130 last Fall, I upgraded the HD to a Seagate 100gb. It does run a bit warmer, but nothing I'm too concerned about. I'm just use to the HD area being warmer on my left palm. I am happy with the performance of the Seagate too. However, whenever I use my D-Link Wireless G card at the airport, I notice the same area gets really warm! So much for the design of the PCMCIA slot right above the HD.

redjr...


redjr...

 

Well guess what, my hardrive's back to normal. This could be explained by one of two things

1) I replaced my 512MB stick with the original 256MB one (I'd had 768 in total in there, extra memory was correct type but slower speed)

2) I did a factory restore

I did all this in preperation of sending the computer back to Averatec but lo and behold I'm getting data transfer speeds of nearly 30MB/s max again.

If it was the factory restore, it means that whatever was causing the problem was software related. I wonder what that could have been?

 

if it worked after changing out your ram, your 512 stick might be damaged. When ram isn't working right, it quickly and easily courrupts your computer.

 

my 6130 is in the shop for overheating issues, and the techs tell me the factory ram was corrupt, and 'could' be the cause.