Dell :: Harddrive Activity
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.
View 11 Replies
ADVERTISEMENT
Sep 18, 2008
So when after I boot up my lappy I can hear something thinking (quiet clicking) and my hdd light is pretty much constantly on... And this NEVER stops...
View 10 Replies
View Related
Dec 10, 2008
I own a Dell Studio 15 and I saw that the hard drive led keeps blinking at about 1 blink / second even when the computer is absolutely doing nothing.
Also I can hear some noise (I suppose it is the hard disk moving) from about 50 cm distance from the laptop.
This happens with Vista, XP, Linux (I tried some distribution: Mandriva, X/K/Ubuntu, PcLinux, Mint...)
Has anybody experienced this strange behaviour on his laptop ?
View 10 Replies
View Related
Mar 24, 2009
So I returned a VAIO Z not too long ago b/c the fan was intolerably noisy due to the fact that it was always blowing.
However, in looking for a new laptop, I just can't seem to find anything similar to a VAIO in terms of looks/portability/battery life
View 9 Replies
View Related
Mar 7, 2013
I am trying to figure out if my video card has gone bad on my 6400 and wanted to know if can be replaced. I have a nvidia 7200 256 mb gpu.. I am running into a problem where my screen just goes black in the middle of everything. The problem also occurs when hooking the laptop up to a monitor. Initially I thought I had a bad inverter board and bad video drivers, both have been replaced but the problem still persist. I ran the diagnostics and the screen went black during the video check. I have to reboot the pc to get the screen back on then the problem happens again.
Can the video card be replaced on the 6400?
View 4 Replies
View Related
May 23, 2010
if there is a way I can put Activity Monitor information on the top bar so I can easily see cpu and ram usage and such. I can't find it anywhere and I'm finding it hard to believe that it doesn't exist...
View 5 Replies
View Related
Nov 11, 2010
I recently purchased a new XPS15 laptop. Everything works fine so far except I am having problems with the USB ports. I have tried multiple flash drives including some with activity lights. None of the drives have been found by windows and there are no other hardware problems. The drives with activity lights just flash continuously.
I have checked online and can't find any newer drivers to try and Dell PC Checkup finds no problems.
View 8 Replies
View Related
Apr 25, 2013
I have a new Inspiron 15 (3521) running Windows 8.
I'm using it as a desktop replacement, so it's got an external keyboard/mouse/monitor plugged in, it's plugged into AC power, and I keep the lid closed.
I have the Windows power management set up so that if the laptop is on AC power, it should never go to sleep. I also have it so that if the lid is closed, nothing should happens.
So here's the problem: If I manually tell Windows to sleep, after I wake it up again, it'll go back to sleep on its own after 2 minutes of no activity. It'll keep doing that, until I open the lid and close it again, and then there won't be any problem until the next time I manually put Windows to sleep again. I can reproduce the problem every time. I'm not sure why it does this, or why it chooses 2 minutes of idle time before sleeping.
I've got the most recent BIOS and all the latest drivers from Dell.
Is this a known bug? Or is there something I'm missing? I couldn't find anything else in the Windows power management control panel, nor in the Intel graphics settings utility.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jan 23, 2015
I'm having an Acer Aspire 4736Z which is cannot boot.
When I power on it there's power light but screen blank. No HDD activity.
And I copy Bios files to my Transcend thumbdrive and enter BIOS recovery mode by pressing FN+ESC, the whole screen turn white and fan running fast! But power light no blink, Thumbdrive no power and activity.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jan 5, 2009
i own a dv5t and today when i went to close the lid the hard disk light turned ORANGE. is this bad?
View 9 Replies
View Related
Nov 28, 2011
Is there a small/free application for download (preferably one that doesn't require going through installation process) that shows how each Windows applications accesses the internet, transfer rates and amounts of data being transferred?
View 1 Replies
View Related
Dec 9, 2014
Updated the bios in a Aspire 7740g from version 1.15 to 1.16 but with poor result. It flashed everything correctly, but when rebooting, nothing... Black screen.
The fan starts and stops after a few seconds, led's indicating that it's "alive", and I've tried the crisis recovery tool with bios 1.15 or 1.16. First with USB-drive (tried all ports), then on a CD-R. No sign of activity on the USB, but the CD-R spins up, head reading and can hear it working for 30-60 sec., rebooting, but then - nothing.
I have tried all key-commands, suggested on the net. Win+ESC, Win+B, Fn+ESC, Fn+B, but - nothing. (Power off, plug and battery removed, hold keys down, power connected and power on.....)
The battery is dead and removed, but it doesn't seem as it matters anyway?
What kind of bios does this Aspire have? Any other key-commands I should try? It seems as the Recovery Boot Block is there somehow, as the CD/DVD-drive spins up and sounds as it's working.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Aug 12, 2013
I have a HP ENVY 15 Notebook PC (LW897AV), running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Service Pack 1. It is only a little over a year old as I got it in June 2012, so is still under warranty. Obviously I'd rather not send it back in if I don't have to.
View 9 Replies
View Related
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....
View 10 Replies
View Related
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
View 8 Replies
View Related
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.
View 10 Replies
View Related
Feb 13, 2015
My problem is that when you turn on the laptop. My monitor shows no signs nor there is activity on the hard disk. I tried to remove the ram,hdd,bios battery,connect it to a tv with hdmi and still no sign of life.
I think it may be corrupt bios. Steps?
View 4 Replies
View Related
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.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Jan 2, 2009
so i replaced the 80gb Seagate Momentus 7200.3 with a WD5000BEVT
(WD Scorpio Blue 500gb). The problem that i have is simple, its not working.
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
a replacement for the new WD harddisk. Has someone ever tried replacing
the original hd with a 500gig one?
View 10 Replies
View Related
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).
View 9 Replies
View Related
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
View 4 Replies
View Related
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...
What I am worried about is if the External Raptor would limit its power? and What do I need to hook it directly up to my laptop with a power source(wihtout screwing with laptop voltages).
View 15 Replies
View Related
Feb 5, 2014
Purchased from Amazon 2 months ago and worked perfectly without a hitch until a few days ago when I got on the receiving end of the win8 equivalent of the BSOD with the . From them on I ended up with slow boots random pauses etc. I opted to refresh the PC without affecting any files but toward the end of the reinstall the BSOD appears and now all I had was a black background with only a white cursor.
Left that for over a hour, nothing happened so held down the power button to force shutdown. Found that Z500 no longer boots into win8 so eventually decided to do a clean reinstall with the onekeyrecovery via NOVO button. This should have been the end of all the problem I was having but unbelievably the problem is still there.
Research what I could about this and found that the slow boot is caused by hard disk constantly being thrashed about by a system file ntoskrnl.exe. I tried updating the wifi driver and it appeared to have done the trick until the next day when I booted up the system again. It appear that the constant hd activity goes away after a few hours of leaving the PC on.
Anyway I have drawn a blank as to what's going on especially as everything was working perfectly until up to that point with no signs of system conflict.
View 5 Replies
View Related
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.
View 10 Replies
View Related
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.
View 10 Replies
View Related
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.
View 15 Replies
View Related
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...
View 9 Replies
View Related
Jun 13, 2008
Installed Power Mgr 6.63.1. When click on the green battery symbol the program does not start only pops up in the activity field as a red icon (battery symbol). I am used to that the program starts and I can change power settings, look at battery condition etc. I have reinstalled it twice with same strange result....
View 9 Replies
View Related
Sep 20, 2009
I have m170 laptop which has a fried motherboard but the harddrive works, also I need my stuff from this harddrdive like my mp3's, pictures, and videos.
I also have inspiron working 9400 laptop. I wanted to know how can I get back these files and put it in the 9400 harddrive because I cant use the m170 laptop to get it back.
I have windows xp home editon installed on the m170 harddrive, I didnt get a chance to backup these files before the m170 got a fried motherboard. It got fried during when I was still using m170.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Jan 26, 2010
I have an acer 5620z and the hard drive died. I replaced the hard drive and I have recovery cd's but I can't use them as it looks for partitions. I have read that I need to partition the hard drive first so I downloaded the DiskFormatDT_V1-1D.iso and installed it. during the process it didn't see the hard drive but it ran through with no errors (by the way the bios does see the hard drive).
After the disk format cd I tried the recovery cds and I get the 'no partition found error' so i am stuck. i know there is the PQService but I don't know what to do as I need to be able to partition the drive so i can run recovery cds. As it is a new disk Alt F10 etc wont work.
View 8 Replies
View Related
