e6420 win7-64 - / i7 2720qm / 8Gb - stalls / freezes - then back to life

Question

ok - my machine, as above specs, has some driver/hardware issue that's unresolved after 2 months. this may be related to use of the eSata port or at least running a storage-intensive application. it doesn't work at all with iaStor drivers that it's supposed to use (iaStor timeouts in the event log, eventually the eSata HD drops off the system). using generic microsoft sata-ahci drivers i can get some work done. i called support once, they didn't have any answers, then dropped the case - and i've seen a lengthy, unresolved thread about similar issues on 6410 somewhere - where the likeliest culprits were supposed to be intel's USB implementation / drivers and perhaps nVidia. what happens is it freezes for about 30s, then comes back to life. nothing in the event log. most often i see this while working with the avid video editor software, but that could be just because that's what i mainly work on. i do recall seeing the same also while running other apps. got the latest nVidia drivers, but the behavior has not changed through several of them. anyone else seeing this? any remedies?

zdoe · Answer

a monologue here, but...

i now suspect that i have a faulty sandy bridge chipset on the machine:

www.anandtech.com/.../intel-discovers-bug-in-6series-chipset-begins-recall

the symptoms are exactly as in the anantech article. shame on dell support for not telling me this when i called - this issue is public knowledge since january this year.

dmitry.sherman · Answer

same here,

bought Dell E6420 I7 8GB 250GB SSD about a month ago, have original Win 7 64bit installed, applied all updates (Dell's and Windows),

laptop sometimes suddenly freezes during the work, only mouse cursor moves, no keyboard, no clicks... i've noticed that the HD led is constantly ON.

After about 10secods everything releases and back to normal.

zdoe · Answer

check your event log - you see iaStor timeouts connected to the freezes, right?

likely your problem for the system drive will be fixed by the LPM registtry hack:

http:/geekmontage.com/texts/ocz-vertex-3-freezes-locks-up-stutters-and-crashes/

">http://geekmontage.com/texts/ocz-vertex-3-freezes-locks-up-stutters-and-crashes/

e.g. - disable the LPM function. used to be that this was disabled by default so removing LPM-related lines would take it out. but somewhere along driver updates the default became it being on, so now explicit registry keys to kill it are necessary. iaStor is by now some 5 years old - so far i've never seen a system work with LPM enabled.

unfortunately the above does not fix the faulty eSata. the best workaround for that is to drop iaStor and install generic microsoft AHCI drivers. that'll curb the HD speed, but at least drives don't timeout and drop off the system.

lriccieri · Answer

Same here. Got the E6420 with i7 2760QM, 4gb RAM, 128gb SSD and this already happened 3 times.

First time it froze for like 5 minutes and came back. Second time it was about 30 seconds and came back and the third time it froze and never came back... I held the power button to turn the system off.

The HDD light gets stuck, only the mouse pointer works... just the same as you guys reported.

Any one knows if this could be due to a defective sandy bridge as in the Anantech article? I mean, they found about the bug in January 2011 and I bought the system January 2012... they should have fixed it by this time.

zdoe · Answer

if you don't have an external drive on the eSata at the same time it's not the sandy bridge - that fault only effects ports past the 1st two. did you disable LPM?

lriccieri · Answer

Just disabled LPM... I hope it works.. the freezes are very random and do not happen very often... it's like in 5 months they happend 3 times.

I'll come back here soon to report if it solved the problem.

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