I am willing to bet they swapped your Samsung HD's with more Samsung.  Get Western Digital and I bet it solves your problem.

 

I would bet just about anything it's the RAID stuff that is causing the crashing.

 

 

nope replaced with seagate,  enginer did say that he thought the samsung one's weren't up to the task.

if it is the raid then why are dell issuing pc's with raid format.

this is MY first dell buy and it's not looking like there will be another. i ran a fujitsu one with lower specs for years without any problems, buy a dell install same stuff and freeze....

there has also been a firmware update for the samsungs here. I have the samsungs non-raid and have not encountered the freezing issues other than 1 game which froze on xp/previous system as well. Others who were having the "freeze" issue report it has gone away (non-Raid anyway).

 

If the issue is always COD, check those forums -- maybe that app has issues and there is a patch?

There are many posts about 420's freezing due to the RAID setup.

 

One suggests deactivating the raid controller on the motherboard bios. Not sure how, but it's a start.

 

OTher suggestions indicate the freezing stopped when the user went NON-RAID.  They stated that just going to 2 X500 NON RAID stopped the issues of freezing for many.  

 

Unfortunately I have run out of possible solutions as these are the two main ones that appear to have worked.  

 

If you are looking for many other possible answers, if you search 420 freezes you'll see many posts.

 

Good luck. 

 

My XPS 420 came with one Western Digital 500 GB drive. I always use Raid0 and I already had 2 500gb 7200 16 mb cache drives that I wanted to use in Raid0. After I received the system, it would barely operate to the point it was almost unusable straight from Dell. I contacted Dell support about the many issues I was experiencing but without any success. I then did a Recovery Restore from the hard drive in an effort to straighten the system out, only to find the issues were still present. I then did a Vista fresh install from the Vista disk, downloaded all the latest drivers and the system performed as it should. No BSOD, lags, hangups, nothing that it should not be doing. I used the system for about 2 weeks to make sure it was stable and then tried to install the 2 500 gb hard drives in a Raid0 configuration but Vista would not recogonize the drives. For ten hours, I tried every trick that I knew, and I know many, but Vista just would not install on the Raid0. The very next day I checked the Dell support site and Dell had issued a new BIOS (A04). I downloaded and installed the new A04 BIOS and tried once again and Vista recogonized the Raid0 array and installed in 20 minutes. I then updated all the drivers and the system is working perfectly for about a month now. It is stable, fast, and a pleasure to use. I concluded the A03 BIOS was the problem along with the original Vista install and Restore Recovery was corrupted also. The new BIOS and the fresh install did the trick. Hope this helps those that have been, or are now, experiencing the same issues as I did.

Disable all RAID in the BIOS and reformat the hardrive and load Vista fresh and it will be more stable.  Do not install any Syamantec Ghost or Internet Security or AV.

 

The Raid0 (stripe) will work properly on this system if done correctly. If not done correctly no Raid confiquration will work properly. Many users that have Raid of any type don't know how Raid works or how to get it to work when it does not. My Raid did not work until I upgraded the BIOS. Dell recogonized this as a problem, hence the newer A04 BIOS revision. If the people with Raid issues will upgrade to the A04 BIOS and do a fresh Vista install, and be aware of the applications they install that are not Vista compatible, Raid will work on the XPS 420 without issues and will notice a significant increase in performance. Otherwise, like you mentioned, if you currently have a Raid configuration you can not just disable the Raid in the BIOS without causing considerable issues with your hard drives. Just disabling the Raid in the BIOS leaves the MBR (Master Boot Record) still having data referring to a Raid array and unless the drive partitions are deleted and recreated the drives will read incorrectly. The Raid array has to be deleted in the Intel Raid Configuration Utility first. Then and only then, can you disable it in the BIOS. After this is done the Vista fresh install can be done without any furthur issues. Most of the Vista hangs, crashes, BSOD and other issues are caused by added applications that are not compatible with Vista. I have Norton Ghost installed, made a Ghost Recovery Point, restored the system as a test and had problems at all, Hope this helps.

problem solved. after a reinstall and adobe photoshop not installing and stupid tech looking at adobe premier going, "whats the problem" was the last straw for me.
 computer gone back, and yes that was not easy either, to start with they sent one box for monitor base unit and speackers, and told me it would be picked up next day, 4 days before the agreed time, so they sent another box and rearranged pickup back to what was already agreed, delivery drive still showes though.
so come to put my computer in the box day before and box is an inch too small, it won't fit. what a joke.
anyway luckily my replacment had come so had pleanty of boxes and packagin, so all the stuff now in 3 boxes, and told dell this and even said "you are going to tell the driver that there is 3 boxes." usuall not listening yeah yeah we tell him. driver comes, have you got a package, yes 3, well i only have 1 down to pick up.
am now running a DIY system to same specs, same setup, same programs, NO PROBLMS. overclocked Q6600 to 3ghz (somet a dell won't let you do) and  it's fast as a bat out of heaven.
little more exspensive than a dell but you buy what you get and with dell in my experiance that seams to be low Quality componants, support lines that a monkey could run as they only read though trouble shooting anyhow. only good thing was the tech guy that came to replace hard drives.
big shame, dad had a laptop that ran for 4 years no problems but this one was beond a joke, just got to wait and see how much of a joke there return payments are....
sorry if this affends anyone but this is my exsperiance.