optiplex 780 windows xp SP3 system freeze

Same issue here. tried dell drivers and other ones but didn't find a solution for it.

I have now upgraded bios to A08 and reinstalled drivers.

Same problems continue. has anybody found a solution.

It appears to be a video driver issue for the ATI 3450 cards (atleast that is the model that we are having issue with). I used Dell's driver and ATI's driver and both produced the same results of it locking up. I upgraded one of our systems from XP to 7 and the system no longer locks up. On another 780 system with XP installed I replaced the video card and it no longer locks up. All of our other 780's have the intel video and have had no issues with locking up.

I solved the problem byremoving all traces of ati drivers and installed the latest ATI driver ffrom the dell site.

I had the ATI drivers installed from the ATI (AMD) site.. I know, I know.. But this was the issue.

Remove all traces by add remove programs and then remove the traces with a driver sweeper tool.. (I did use the tool from guru3D)

Good luck guys! :-)

I solved the problem by removing all traces of ati drivers and installed the latest ATI driver ffrom the dell site.

I had the ATI drivers installed from the ATI (AMD) site.. I know, I know.. But this was the issue.

Remove all traces by add remove programs and then remove the traces with a driver sweeper tool.. (I did use the tool from guru3D)

Good luck guys! :-)

edit: Sorry for double post.. Had some lag here..

I have the same problem.

Dell Optiplex 780 with A07 bios.
No extra graphics cards. Using the built-in (Intel)

This happens when not on all the computers and we have several out of business.
Nothing shows the errors in the logs. It just hangs and you have to turn it off by turning it off via the on / off button.

Tested upgraded the bios and also downgraded. No difference.

Using Windows XP Pro (SP3)

Join the club. The last thing I observed was that, the problem was more likely to happen whenever the pc was awoken from a sleep state. But I tried enabling and disabling all the power options in the bios. nothing worked.

Try the power options and check if that helps. Have a feeling it is linked to the NIC and the power saving feature. This is just a hunch though.

FOUND A SOLUTION:

Install the latest "Intel Storage Manager" found on the dell page for this model.  This updated the sata drivers also. Suggest you note the driver version and date for the Sata device before and after the storage manager install. The version in mine was dated x.x.2009 before and x.x.2010 after.

Have been running the machines for the past 3 days without the system freeze. Feel this is a permanent solution.

Thanks for all your help and contributions.

This is a wide spread problem. When it first started, it appeared that changing out the hard drive would fix it. Now I have upgraded the bios to latest A09 and on a single machine I have upgraded all of the intel program drivers to support.dell.com website, hopefully that will provide some answer.

If it is still messing up I will look at the video. It isn't consistent across batches of machines I imaged 30 this week and about 10 failed and still need something. I don't want to get a batch of these in the field before I figure out what is wrong.

Dell, we need some guidance here, are any of your tech people looking at this? I would like a clear answer as to what is happening other than we changed stuff until it went away.

Hard to believe this is continuing. We resolved the issue as on the date in my last post. Since then there has been no problem. Can you try going back to that version of the Intel Storage Manager and try again. All the 20 machines we have have been working fine since then. I can retrieve the versions again if that would help. This problem is detailed in here also http://community.spiceworks.com

Ramesh,

can you tell me exactly which steps you took for the 780's with XP regarding the intel storage manager? An exact download link would be great, since I see a bunch of different types of downloads for that.  I'm having an issue where computers are randomly shutting down.  Got a phone call today, she said the computer just turned off in the middle of work.  When I got to her desk, the amber power light was on with the fan at full blast.  Had to unplug the power cord and plug it back in to get it to boot normally.   Holding the power button until it turns off then back on didnt work.   In device manager, if I right click on the SATA RAID device and view the driver, its from 2009 (iastor.sys).  For whatever reason, it's not getting updated during my sysprep process.. I'll look into that, but I'm assuming those are the files you updated..?

Thanks

I will try my best to recount what I did. Please understand that I am not exactly a sysadmin and this happened many many months back. The only good news is that all systems are working fine so far. Here goes:

CAVEAT: My problem was slightly dfferent as the systems simply hung with the hard disk light on and everything else frozen. The power button did work if kept depressed for whatever seconds. Fans were functioning normally.

Bios Version   A08   Release date   01/21/2011  

Bios Settings:  

sata port is set for "Raidautodetect/AHCI"

speedstep: disabled

low power mode: disabled

C-states control : disabled

When I click on

Device Manager/IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers/Intel(R) ICH10D/D0 SATA AHCI Controller

and then click on "Driver" tab

this is what I see

Intel(R) ICH10D/D0 SATA AHCI Controller

Driver Provide: Intel

Driver Date: 03/03/2010

Drver Version: 9.6.0.1014

Digital Signer: Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility Publisher

I must have installed the following drivers (Just giving the driver folder names of the driver package that are automatically created in a folder called "DELL" in the root of the system driver--in my case "C:", when you download and install from the DELL support site).

R227558

R253211

R264763

R272000

R279349

R280820

R286630

R288017

Hoping you can trace the driver package from these names.

Also: For a long time I suspected that the power management had something to do with  it as the system freeze was happening usually when you left it idle for some time. That is reason "speedstep" and "low power mode" were disabled in the bios.

ALSO: If I recall correctly, I had to install the "Intel Storage Manager" software to update the AHCI driver. This is different from the usual SATA/ATA driver update package.

All the best.

We have this problem as well; however, we've deployed some and have terrible end user problems.

We've been able to reproduce with consistance that the video is locked up using the beziers screen saver and verify that we can manage computer remotely, access network shares, and use network resources on the 'locked' computer.

With DELL pro support, I been able to identify that the problem appears to stem from a Windows update of the Video driver to a version newer than the DELL supported version. (kudos to Jerome and Chris)

I'm working on getting the update information, to place here, as well as asking the community how to completely un-install the video drivers and re-install.

Regards