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Serious System Crashes on XPS420
Hello
Since I recieved my XPS420 sometime in January, I have had a recurring serious problem with it. Sometimes, when playing games designed for Vista or Occasionaly XP (which I run in compatibility mode) the computer crashes.
What happens, is the screen freezes for a few seconds, and currently playing sound repeats over again. Then everything is normal, then it happens again. This cycle repeats at least 4 or 5 times. After which, the program ends, and I am taken back to the Vista Desktop. Only now, everything is running very very slowly, and a quick glance at the Hard drive activity light tells me the system is having to work very hard on something. So hard infact, that when I attempted to turn the computer off, it took 2 and a half hours of waiting for the switch off procedure to do its thing! I got so bored I just had to switch it off and back on again using the button at the front of the case.
Now what happens, is during the boot up, the RAID controller tells me that an error occured in the first of my 2 500GB HD's, and does not procede any further in the boot up process. The only way it can get past this screen? Delete the RAID volume and re-install the OS again! Which means re-installing all the BIOS updates, drivers, software etc etc.
This has happened 5 times now! I suspect that its a hard drive issue, because nothing else registers as a problem. Thanks for reading. Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated!
Q6600 2.4GHz 1066Mhz FSB, 8MB cache
3GB RAM
1TB Serial ATA Raid 0 Stripe (2x500GB) 7200Rpm
768MB GeForce 8800GTX
PSYCHOOO
14 Posts
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March 16th, 2008 00:00
David! I have same problem with my xps 420 - system crashes exactly the same, works for a while with crashing sounds, freezing for a sec here and there and reports ERROR OCCCURED on two disks. I've tried to contact dell technical support few times - still trying to get to bottom of the issue!
Only help in bringing disks back without reinstall is pressing F12 and choosing diagnostics - just run disk test, abort it after 30sec-1minute and then after few reboots system should be fine. I think there's something wrong with RAID itself, will try to solve that issue with XPS tech support. Seems like disks stop working after a while and that stuff happens to me nearly every day now. If you;ll find the solution yourself please letme know.
Regards
Gregg B
Q6600 2.4GHz 1066Mhz FSB, 8MB cache
3GB RAM
1TB Serial ATA Raid 0 Stripe (2x500GB) 7200Rpm
768MB GeForce 8800GTX
packerFan07
705 Posts
0
March 16th, 2008 01:00
PSYCHOOO
14 Posts
0
March 16th, 2008 14:00
Thanks PackerFan07 for that thread - I think I'll have to reinstall system for non-raid solution, although I cant do it at the moment -too much work goin on and too much data on drives. I share your opinion that thats not the drives itself that are failing - tests are ok and drives look ok. Some threads refer to graphic card fans not cooling machine properly and to sound card (SB x-fi) failing. Will investigate and will try not to ring support. Thanks again!