XPS 435 Owners Thread

Well I'm back to the same problem with freezing on re-boots. Third or fourth times the charm and it'll go into windows.

So far I've had a new video card, ATI drivers then back to dell support ATI drivers after a full re-install from dell partition. Re-loaded all my 64 bit approved phtoshop CS4 and lightroom 2 and now a week later it's doing it again. Must be a bad hardware driver that I blame on dells updates.

 

I'm going to try and re-install from the dell recovery CD or DVD instead of from the recovery partition on the hard drive and then use ATI's 4870 drivers with CCC as was suggested in this very forum.

Raymond

Well I'm back to the same problem with freezing on re-boots. Third or fourth times the charm and it'll go into windows.

Sorry, I'm not familiar with your problem, unless it is the same as mine, or similar. Your problem starts when you choose to reboot? And then you have to reboot three or four times to get a reboot? A cold boot ever?

Sympathies; sounds like much drag.

Looks like my spontaneous reboots may indeed be resulting from the voltage differences between the RAM

Well, I tried to steer you to the ram that had actually been used by quite a few 435 owners to no avail.   Due to the difficulty in returning RAM,  it pays to really be sure on this purchase.  Good luck.  You could try ditching the Dell RAM and running just the 6GB of OCZ as a stopgap if you cant return.   Dell's bios runs the ram at 1.5v.   

Interestingly, I've noticed far more issues with the T version compared to the original MT.  My MT has run like a top in optimized Vista 64.   Boot time from cold start is @ 42 sec and that's with ESET NOD32 antivirus ( excellent and little system drain) and external drives to add to the RAID 0 equation.

On the RAM, if not working with uber large video or photoshop files, 6GB is just fine for most.   Advice to others without the need; dont just upgrade for the bragging rights of a full load of RAM.  

-kh 

Looks like my spontaneous reboots may indeed be resulting from the voltage differences between the RAM DIMMs. I'll try to confirm. Can't explain the strange boot device issues, though.

Not regarding my system, but generally, from OCZ forum:

The voltage is "required" to run at the timings, if you can't supply the voltage, then it still should run at looser timings by default. Although it still may require increasted voltage by 0.1V (1.9V) to run stably.

[quote user="brookefox"]OCZ OCZ3P1333LV6GK DDR3 PC3-10666 1333 MHz 6GB Platinum XTC Triple Channel Kits Problem with this is it's actually rated at a stock 1.65v for these specs.  The ram I quoted was rated to run the specs at 1.5v, which is what the 435 series runs.  I'm sure of the MT running the ram at a stock 1.5v and almost sure the T is 1.5v as well.

Right, but I keep seeing different numbers from different places on the same parts. At OCZ, all three are 1.65V (or 1.6V* or 1.65EVP*).

Thanks.

[/quote]

 

 

You tried to steer me and I appreciate that, but apparently you had other things to do as well (how could you?) and I was left without an adviser to clue me at the time of the deal's expiry. Mea culpa, for sure. BTW, my system ain't for bragging, clearly, and I do need to run large Photoshop sessions; that and CAD are the reasons I'm here.

The current advice from OCZ tracks your thoughts on ditching the Dell RAM.

Dell XPS Studio 435T incompat OCZ3P1333LV6GK? I tried installing 6 GB OCZ OCZ3P1333LV6GK DDR3 PC3-10666 1333 MHz (1.65V) in a stock Dell XPS Studio 435T Intel Core i7-920 Processor (8MB L3 Cache, 1MB L2 Cache, 2.66GHz) which had 4 GB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz, running at 1.5v, I believe. Is the voltage difference likely what is causing continuous spontaneous reboots? "This board only has 4 dimm slots? Not 6? Did you install only the OCZ ram? Not the OCZ along with the stock?" It has 6 slots, originally having 1 gb in each of 4. I removed 1 and moved 1 so all the 1s are in the same (alternating) bank and put the OCZs in the other alternating bank. Total 9Gb. "Test just the 3 OCZ for now. Make sure things run stable. Mixing densities is not recommended and may be causing issues, yes." OK, will do. Thank you.

[quote user="brookefox"]Looks like my spontaneous reboots may indeed be resulting from the voltage differences between the RAM

Well, I tried to steer you to the ram that had actually been used by quite a few 435 owners to no avail.   Due to the difficulty in returning RAM,  it pays to really be sure on this purchase.  Good luck.  You could try ditching the Dell RAM and running just the 6GB of OCZ as a stopgap if you cant return.   Dell's bios runs the ram at 1.5v.   
........
On the RAM, if not working with uber large video or photoshop files, 6GB is just fine for most.   Advice to others without the need; dont just upgrade for the bragging rights of a full load of RAM.  

[/quote]

 

So I decided to bite the bullet and see if a clean Vista install from the DELL CD, would solve my slow boot problem.  In my case I was seeing boot times that arbitraily varied from about 80 seconds to 180 seconds or more for no apparent reason, with the time lag occuring after the Micosoft Windows progress bar completed about 5 sweeps and then went to a black screen. I am happy to report that after the clean install of the OS, including drivers from the  DELL Drivers & Utilities CD, and a reinstall of all previous programs and data files, I have not seen one slow boot.  Using the Reboot_time script posted in this thread my reboot times are always 83 seconds or less.  I wish I could put my finger on what caused the slow boots and I must admit its only been 24 hours on the new system, but I must have rebooted dozens of times now because I checked my times after each program install to see if I could find a culprit, and no lag like before.  Note: I did not install the ATI driver for my 4870 display adapter and the Catalyst Control Center from the the Dell CD.  Instead I installed both directly from the AMD site.  I should also point out that I did not download any driver updates from the Dell Support Site, as my CD semed to have all the latest versions and my BIOS was at A07.   I will keep monitoring my timings and post another update to this thread at the end of the week.  I am cautiously optimistic at this point in time... I have one question regarding how I configured my drive and Raid...  I have a single drive configuration and the BIOS setting for Sata 1-5 is AHCI--- not Raid.  I assume that is correct since I only have the one drive.  Is this correct?  If so, I wonder if my initial config from DELL was set to be Raid and perhaps this was causing the problem?  Just fishing here as I am a novice when it comes to Raid ...

So here's the update to my post above...  Since the clean install from the Vista CD, I have not had one slow boot and the reboot times continue to be under 83 seconds.  I would suspect from a cold start the boot time is about a minute, maybe less.  Someone else mentioned that they think the original Dell image may be suspect as a clean install from the Vista CD solved their hang problem.  Although different than the slow boot issue I experienced, it makes you wonder?  For other who have expereinced the slow boot, you may want to bite the bullet too and try for a clean install from the Vista CD. 

If anyone can reply to my question regarding the AHCI/Raid Bios setting that I referred to in my post above I would appreciate it, although I am hesitant to touch anything at this point! 

If anyone can reply to my question regarding the AHCI/Raid Bios setting that I referred to in my post above I would appreciate it, although I am hesitant to touch anything at this point!

RAID is something that requires 2 (or more) physical hard drives. You can't do RAID with just one. It is also best to have the 2 drives be identical, otherwise RAID will default to the smaller size and speed.

RAID 0 is stipped, one half the data written alternately to each device by block/sector. Lose one drive, all data lost. It is faster as the buffers are combined/shared and the drive size is doubled. Performance is better than a single drive.

RAID 1 is mirrored, both drives are written to at the same time.. Lose a drive, the other has the data and can be recovered. Drive size will be the size of the smallest drive. There is no performance gain.

Since you don't have 2 drives, use AHCI, the SATA interface.

In order to run RAID, the RAID controller must also be enabled and configured.

I suspect the wrong image, a RAID one, was written to your drive. Better check the recovery partition as well as it could be RAID too and therefore not bootable. You can reach that via the F12 on boot up.

 

i dont know if thats all true or not,i had an emachine t5224 and it was set up for raid with only 1 hard drive from the factory,one day i did a clean install

and did a test run with the raid setting then reinstalled again with ahci and it was ALOT slower with the ahci.

so in the long run if it aint broke dont try to if it u well waste your time tryin ;-)

For other who have expereinced the slow boot, you may want to bite the bullet too and try for a clean install from the Vista CD.

 

I generally love doing clean installs to get everything running quickly and smoothly again, I probably did close to a dozen in the six years I owned my Dimension 8300.  May have to bite that bullet too like yourself and do one on this 435MT though, the slow reboots are something I am not used to and cannot get used to......plus I've been having icon problems (wrong icons shown for specific file extensions) that I've fixed but still not happy with the quirkiness.  Also the inablity to uninstall CCC in the traditional method through the control panel is an annoyance.  The only thing delaying me from the clean install is that I've spent a month getting this thing loaded up with all of my "stuff" and configured the way I like it.  Thus I haven't been whining about the reboot problem lately, especially since a simple clean install from the cd/dvd seems like it might be the silver bullet.  BTW,thanks for the info and follow-up rettenhu.

[quote user="rettenhu"]For other who have expereinced the slow boot, you may want to bite the bullet too and try for a clean install from the Vista CD.

 

I generally love doing clean installs to get everything running quickly and smoothly again, I probably did close to a dozen in the six years I owned my Dimension 8300.  May have to bite that bullet too like yourself and do one on this 435MT though, the slow reboots are something I am not used to and cannot get used to......plus I've been having icon problems (wrong icons shown for specific file extensions) that I've fixed but still not happy with the quirkiness.  Also the inablity to uninstall CCC in the traditional method through the control panel is an annoyance.  The only thing delaying me from the clean install is that I've spent a month getting this thing loaded up with all of my "stuff" and configured the way I like it.  Thus I haven't been whining about the reboot problem lately, especially since a simple clean install from the cd/dvd seems like it might be the silver bullet.  BTW,thanks for the info and follow-up rettenhu.

[/quote]

I'm getting closer to biting the bullet and doing a clean install. My boot times with Vista 64-bit on the 435T have varied from 60 seconds to almost 3 minutes, and I'm not using the illuminated keyboard which some have found to cause a slow boot. My Dell laptop, running Vista 32-bit, boots in 40 seconds.

Hi everybody,

Just got my 435T today, it's still in the box and I won't have time to set it up for a couple of days...  Seems to me that a few people have solved many of the boot/stability issues by reinstalling the OS from the Vista DVD instead of the Dell partition.  Do you guys think it would be wise to just go ahead and do this from the beginning?  I know I'll lose all of the drivers, but I should be able to find them all online somewhere, correct?  I've wiped and reinstalled XP many times on my Dimension 8300; is the process similar in Vista?  Also, if I decide to do this, should I just get rid of the Dell partition altogether?

So many questions... Here is what I got:

Core i7 920

6GB RAM

ATI Radeon 4870 1GB

No soundcard, no WLAN

2x640GB RAID 0

I also ordered the logitech wireless keyboard and mouse to use media center from my couch (I'm lazy).  Has anyone had any boot issues with this combination?  Thanks for your help guys, I'm really looking forward to seeing what this thing can do!

Do you guys think it would be wise to just go ahead and do this from the beginning?  I know I'll lose all of the drivers, but I should be able to find them all online somewhere, correct?

Face,

I have a somewhat simular configuration and I had no problems till I updated the video driver from the ATI website. I restored it to the date just before I installed the updated video driver and it is running fine!  I have not had to use my Disks!  I would give it a go and see how it runs "as is" You can always do a reinstall if it does give you problems.

Hi everybody, Just got my 435T today, it's still in the box and I won't have time to set it up for a couple of days...  Seems to me that a few people have solved many of the boot/stability issues by reinstalling the OS from the Vista DVD instead of the Dell partition.  Do you guys think it would be wise to just go ahead and do this from the beginning?  I know I'll lose all of the drivers, but I should be able to find them all online somewhere, correct?  I've wiped and reinstalled XP many times on my Dimension 8300; is the process similar in Vista?  Also, if I decide to do this, should I just get rid of the Dell partition altogether? So many questions... Here is what I got: Core i7 920 6GB RAM ATI Radeon 4870 1GB No soundcard, no WLAN 2x640GB RAID 0 I also ordered the logitech wireless keyboard and mouse to use media center from my couch (I'm lazy).  Has anyone had any boot issues with this combination?  Thanks for your help guys, I'm really looking forward to seeing what this thing can do!

I agree wih jjon90 that you shouldn't do the reinstall right away.  Give it some time and see how it goes.  And, yes, you can get all the latst drivers from the Dell website.  In my case, I started out using he Dell supplied applications and drivers disc.  I was fortunae because it had th same driver versions that were on the site, so I felt that using the CD was simpler.  I did NOT load the ATI driver or Catalyst Control Center from Dell.  I got those from the AMD site directly.  Seems like the ATI software is also a common thread in the slow boot/hang issues that some have experienced.  Good luck and keep us posted on your experience...

Just to confirm somethings in error with the Dell Partitioned Image.

After a re-install from Dell Partitioned image on hard drive using dell supports version of ATI 4870 drivers & CCC. Freezing on re-boot problem is back and guess what I'm seeing the CCC can't open error on the top left again just like when it was new. CCC can't open error was fixed by drivers from ATI direct instead of dells and a new , probably unneccesary replacement video card.

I'm calling dell again but we''ll make re-installing from CD our next step skipping all dell ATI stuff and getting it direct from ATI.................................Raymond

PS: Although I had the CCC failed to start error since it was new I ignored it and updated drivers from ATI seemed to cure it. I also updated all other applicable items on the dell support site at the same time inc bios a07. I feel one of these many updates caused my freezing on boot problem, because it did not start till after that and it's got to be hardware because windows never gets to loading it freezes on dell splash screen or DOS controller screen. Never reaches RAID info. Just freezes on intel matrix controller. Punching and holding power button to re-start takes 3-4 trys till windows loads. I blame the dell updates. Probably the real tek card reader or HD audio.................