Dell :: Failing Harddrive On XPS1340
Nov 7, 2009
I'm experiencing some strange problems with my XPS1340 and I think it might be related to a failing harddrive.
The computer hangs quite often during startup or if I am installing/running programs. However, it seems to handle file copying with no problems - at least for now.
When it hangs, the harddrive LED stays ON, but the computer doesn't freeze totally and no BSOD. I can still move the mouse, but I can't open any programs or browse through files. After a while I get a message that Windows is not responding and I have the option to terminate the process or wait for it to respond. I can't click on any, though.
The only thing to do is a hard reset, and then normally the computer boots with no problems. If it hangs during startup I have to do the hard reset again.
As mentioned - the problem seems to occur only when the computer is installing a program / opening a program / starting up. I have just copied about 20GB to the harddrive to test, and it did that with no problems at about 32MB/s. Also - I can do "light work" like typing (I'm typing this on the computer)
I have tried to format and do a complete reinstall AND - Windows installs just fine - the problems begin when I start to install all the programs.
So.. Is this harddrive related, or could it be something else??.. I really think it's weird...
I got the computer about six months ago and until now I haven't really had any problems. I'm running windows 7 64 bit and the harddrive is a Western Digital (WDC WD32 00BJKT-75F4T).
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Nov 24, 2009
I feel that my 9400M G card is about to die, heres why:
When I upgraded to win7 I noticed a more blurry playback on same videos, and my card would always get stuck in a certain part of the video playing a sound "grrr wwaaa'' like microter, and then regain itself and very soon do the same again, and there isnt anything bad with the video because it would do it in different parts all the time.. Same even on dvd playback too...
So I tried all options, all drivers that are out, all codecs, then I came to conclusion that its win7 and the drivers arent perfectly made for it yet, So then I installed back Vista to resolve this issue once and for all.. Only today I find that the issue is back again... I cant watch any music video without it chopping the audio for like 2 seconds and playing a broken disk sound and freezing for those 2 seconds then playing again and about in another 30 seconds doing the same again.
So can some one tell me is this NVIDIA 9400M G that is gona die soon?
The video quality of dvd's is perfect other formats gotten a lil worse! but the audio making a horrible broken records disk and video freezing for 2 secons happens in all videos even dvd's, youtube, avi, mp4, mpg, etc....
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Aug 6, 2009
I have been looking for a powerful, mobile, and good battery 13 inch laptop. Of course
Dell's xps 13 studio is the first to come up in my mind. The battery is alright, but its powerful and looks great.
But then I found the Sony Vaio Sr. With a better battery life, Radeon 4570 video card, and lighter/thinner
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Apr 11, 2009
However, my battery life has gone down to 2 hours instead of the original 3 and a half hours when I first received it. I got my laptop on march 28 so it's only been two weeks.
Is there something wrong with the battery i got? On average, I only use this laptop 2-3 hours a day and it's on sleep or usually shut down when i'm not using it.
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Oct 7, 2009
So to keep it as short as possible, I had many issues with my xps 1330 (it ahd the extended battery from start) and eventually ended up having the option to get the 1340 as my replacement of equal or better specs. I agreed and received a xps 1340.
First problem was that it did not come with the extended battery. I called and asked about it and they ended up sending me a replacement extended battery for the standard one.
On monday the 5th of october they received my old laptop (1330) and the transfer should of been done at that time. I was told the transfer will be done when my laptop is received, it hasn't .....
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Apr 11, 2010
When i load a disk the drive tries to spin up three of times but then stops.
I've tried several discs and it's the same each time so it's not the disc, only started happening today.
I've tried reinstalling the driver but to no avail. Maybe some dirt got in there? I read of some utility to test the drive but i can't find it.
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May 16, 2009
So a few days ago I tried to boot up my machine and it did nothing after the BIOS screen. I had to hold the power button to get it do shut off. After a few minutes I tried to reboot and Vista tried to fix the problem which it indicated it couldn't. So I tried to do a system restore and it failed. In fact it failed on every point I tried.
The next day the system seemed to be running normally so I just figured it was a fluke. Then the next day Vista booted but I had no desktop icons, all programs initialized with errors and nothing was responding. So I rebooted and backed up my data.
I then downloaded Active Hard Disk Monitor and was shocked to see my Raw read error rate was 57% and my seek error rate was 66%! So I contacted Dell tech support and was instructed to run their diagnostics. The initial test indicated an inverter cable issue but the HDD passed all tests.
So my question is shoudl I be concerend about the SMART feedback info or should I rely on Dells diagnostics? My concern is that their diagnostics may only flag a problem if the drive is really close to death not just on its way. I plan on reinstalling the OS but don't want to spend the effort if this drive is going to be on its way out.
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May 6, 2008
Got my XPS 1730 today and as soon as windows booted, the first message I got was that a RAID 0 drive was failing and I needed to back it up immediately. Does this mean anything? Do I have a defective part?
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Jul 23, 2009
Recently my laptop's desktop and icons have started to flash randomly,things like the sound icon has a x on it.A couple of days a ago avast warned me about a win32:trojan(other) in 2 places.
I looked at dell's instruction to replce the gpu but i think it would be to hard for me to do and my warranty is over.
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Apr 13, 2009
i think my 8700 sli is failing, a lot of stuttering and screen tearing. im gonna try to get it replaced, anyone know if this card is still available ? or will i get the 8800
i was disappointed with the 8700..
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Jan 2, 2009
my m1530's 8600m gt is now idling between 69-73 degrees celsius, as opposed to the 58-65 it did when it was new. also, in-game temps are now well into the 90's. will be calling dell support this afternoon to have them set up a tech to come out and replace it.
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Dec 13, 2008
I believe my video card in XPS 1530 is failing, from time to time i get half inch by half inch colorful checkboard pattern on part of my screen, usually shows up in the same place.
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Nov 12, 2008
after 2 clean installs in a row, the HD is always spinning at 7200rpm... always...
the HD blips when im actually telling somethign to use it, but not on constantaly...
it is SOOO loud though....
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Mar 12, 2009
Past few months my 9300 with the 100gb 5400RPM drive has been laggin like crazy due to lots of harddrive activity. Sometimes it feels like I'm running a pentium 2. I always thought it's because I didn't have much free space (8-15gb) but I recently cleared it down to like 35GB free and have set a defragmentation every night at 4am. I use diskkeeper for that. It hasn't really gotten that much better...
I think I will do a "boot-time" defragmentation to totally defragment, but what else should I check?
Running 2gb ram with 1gb paging file, windows xp pro, up to date.
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Aug 17, 2009
I have a Dell XPS M1530 with a 320GB HDD. A few months back when I checked how much free space I had left it showed 295GB not 320GB in total.
Currently I have 224GB out of 295GB and this doesn't seem right to me because I have nothing on my HDD except for CCleaner and and a few small programs.
I figured that so much space was being taken up because when I downloaded Firefox which is 30MB, 10GB was taken off of of my HDD, same thing happens with whatever I download. I have no clue whats going on
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Oct 11, 2008
My Hard drive went kaput and right after I had put about 4 hours of paper research info into it.
I spent hours trying to get the information off the drive, but now have an additional issue: The external drive I borrowed from my friend was being used with Apple OS X. SO, when I plug it in to this win XP machine, it doesn't recognize the drive or show any existing files!
Does anyone know a program or a way to help me verify if my attempt to recover data might have been successful? The only other option I can think of is, after getting a new drive into the laptop, installing linux hastily and transferring to a different drive. And no, the friend that I am borrowing from is a few hours away at the moment. I need that research for Monday, and I feel the pressure!
This is the first hard drive that has ever failed on me inside of a year, and its true what they say: It happens only when you suddenly have data that is actually important.
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Nov 1, 2009
my daughters Inspiron 1501 (just out of guarantee) when switched on the keyboard lock lights come on briefly as normal, the hard disc runs up, the screen
illuminate after a few seconds then the following characters momentarily appear top left of the screen- RS485/M BR#23931 -the screen blacks out momentarily then illuminates again.
Does anyone know what the message tells us . It took lots of restarts to get the full message and there may be mistakes in it .....
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Dec 8, 2008
My company recently bought 10 M4400 and they work good so far...not laptop freezing etc....but both myself and another guy have had our power adapter die on us.
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Oct 1, 2009
I selected my language and the hard-drive then I click install then an eternity later right at the end of the uncompressing file it says
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Nov 21, 2009
I'm trying to access a flash drive on an Old Dell computer. I cannot access the Windows folders or install paths on the harddrive. I do believe the flash drives are installed, but they will not show up when put in the computer. The computer should be around 7 years old.
I can try to get more information out of the computer, I would just need to know where to find it (as it is not mine). It is a desktop and not a laptop BTW. It has never been formatted.
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Jan 2, 2009
so i replaced the 80gb Seagate Momentus 7200.3 with a WD5000BEVT
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The Bios is detecting the new HD correctly and the new WD harddrive also
passed the DELL diagnostic test.
But when i try to restore a Backup or install a new OS, the menues
freeze where i have to access the harddrive.
I also tried to download the WD diagnostic tool but when i run that it is freezing at the beginning when it says "DR-DOS booting".
Can someone tell me if it is a bios or chipset related probem or do i need
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the original hd with a 500gig one?
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Apr 29, 2009
This is my first post here and am new to this site.
Yesterday my XPS 1330 arrived with a 128 GB SSD. I was very impressed with startup, quietness, etc. I moved files from an external harddrive with pics and audio (totaled to 40 GB).
I then went to view the drive and saw that I had 12GB left...not even a day that I own a new laptop and my machine is nearly full. My old HP laptop still has 50GB left.
I removed the pics and that gave me 40GB left.
18.5GB is dedicated to "Dell DataSafe Local Backup..." I have no idea why this is so huge
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Sep 15, 2007
I know there's 2 ways to do this but I have speed concerns....basically I want to stick a Raptor into my laptop which is 99% of the time stationed. Here are the only two ways that I know.
1) Build an external USB 2.0 by buying an external exclosure etc.
2) Hooking the raptor directly up with a power source..This I remember seeing on Tom's Hardware but I cannot find it and I don't think they explain it that well...
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Feb 14, 2010
My friend has Inspiron 9400 that's on its last legs, it keeps turning off at random times, graphics on screen sometimes become corrupted. The laptop does not seem to be overheating and the fans are clean.
We've contacted Dell as he has a 3yr Complete care package, he's had the HDD replaced multiple times. The last time he sent in the laptop for serving they returned it with nothing fixed, they said they replaced the fans but the fans are still the original ones as I accidentally scratched the bottom side of the fans and they're the exact same one .....
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Feb 17, 2009
ok so the title says it all im getting all the vertical lines, this ty 200 dollar ddr2 card was the worst purchase for this laptop.
Read all threads about dells extended warranty for this issue.
everyone talks but is there a way to get it replaced by dell
I called customer service, the well known joke of dell, and i hung up on them about 5 min into convo.
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Feb 17, 2010
I don't know what it is, or maybe its just the way the system works...
But basically, but something is constantly on even when I just have the laptop on with a few IE windows, you can especially feel it just to the left of the touchpad. From time to time, I will also hear the the noise coming from it and it till slow down, then start up again.
I mean, its not a big issue, but is something wrong with the laptop?
This happens when the CPU load is as low as just 5%, temperatures around 42-45 degrees Celsius.
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Feb 15, 2009
Ive been dealing with windows vista on this labtop for awhile and i am tired of vista. I had previously tried putting in a XP disk and tried to reformat and got a BSOD when entering setup. So i decided to by a new harddrive for the computer because the old harddrive was small anyways. [url] I put the new harddrive in and bios recognized that the harddrive was there. I then put in the xp cd and tried to set up windows again. The same problem happened so I thought it might be the xp CD. I went to windows msdn and i downloaded windows xp professional NO SERVICE PACK(for free) and burnt the image file onto a cd. I then tried installing windows again, and another blue screen of death. My bios is A07 and there is a new bios A08 and i dont know if it will help. Ive been looking around for posts on similar problems and for dell labtops ive seen they have said to get sata drivers. There are none for the dell xps m1210 to my knowledge. If someone could show me where i can find them that would be great. Ive also read people going onto the dell bios and doing something with autodetect. My dell bios has no section about harddrive, its the worst excuse for a bios. I currently can use the old harddrive with vista, if i need to update any drivers but i cant find any drivers that would help in my situation. [url] Do i need to use a newer service pack of XP to work with newer hard drives ive read that service pack 1 supports sata harddrives larger than 137GB? The blue screen comes during windows setup.
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Jan 18, 2010
Trying to run a D620 with a new harddrive, a 320 GB WD3200BEVT.
The 620 will say "a read error occurred, press Ctrl alt del to reboot" directly after post. I doesn't not attempt to load an OS.
In the BIOS:I made sure that the harddrive password protection thing is all off
In the device list the 320 GB drive appears, so it's not a mechanical problem
The drive works on a modern AM2 desktop.
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Jan 13, 2009
I have a new M1530 and I just have a couple of minor issues.
Firstly, the harddrive always makes noises (like it is thinking) even when the computer is idle. It's not loud and just sounds like normal access sounds, but it makes a little noise every 2 seconds or so. Is this normal and can I make it stop? Like I said, the noise sounds like a normal HD noise, but it just never shuts up.
Finally, has anyone had problems connecting to wireless networks in vista? I have connected my laptop to 2 networks already and it was fine, but now when I try and connect to my main network, it asks for "additional log on information", including a username, password and domain. I don't have this info and have only ever used a WEP key...
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Jan 24, 2009
I got my HP DV5t about 4-5 mos. ago. The graphics card which is a 9600m GT is definitely starting to fail. When ever I start to play graphically intensive games like COD4 or CS 1.6 the screen begins to freeze and the computer says the display driver failed while other times it causes a BSOD. This used to happen occasionally about 1-2 mos. ago but now it happens very often. I updated my drivers as soon as I got the laptop and always lifted the back for better airflow while gaming but apparently it didnt help.
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