Random freezes - Seven Professional x64

gregrocker said:

The problem is the Nvidia Display driver. Where did it come from?

Go to the Dell SUpport Downloads webpage for your tag number and import the latest Display driver.

If you already have it go to the Nvidia Support Downloads webpage and try that latest driver for your GPU.

The replacement order you want to try is: 1) Win7 installer/Windows Update driver, 2) Dell driver, 3) Nvidia driver, 4) next oldest driver from Dell or Nvidia.

It came from Windows Update, just like you told me to, and it's the latest version. Time for a rollback?

essenbe said:

If you have software raid, you should be able to hold the control key down and press "I" on startup and it will take you to the raid control. You should have the option to break the array. Be advised, as soon as you do this you will lose everything so backup what you need before trying this. After breaking the array, as GregRocker said, set your sata contrller to AHCI and with only 1 drive connected and the sata controller in ahci, do a clean install of windows, after formatting the disk. The disks in raid should be in a GPT format and need to be in MBR format(simple primary partition). That can be done from the installation disk.

OK, mate, thanks for your input! :) Will make sure to test this.

Well you can try it. I have one other case where Updates pushes through a buggy Nvidia driver, so I hid it. Win7 Updates errors are one in a million, though, so it's rare anomaly.

If that doesn't resolve your freezes then I'd follow Steve's procedure to unRAID and install to one HD. RAID0 is not even redundant which is supposedly the R in RAID.

gregrocker said:

Well you can try it. I have one other case where Updates pushes through a buggy Nvidia driver, so I hid it. Win7 Updates errors are one in a million, though, so it's rare anomaly.

If that doesn't resolve your freezes then I'd follow Steve's procedure to unRAID and install to one HD. RAID0 is not even redundant which is supposedly the R in RAID.

OK, will do. I'll probably try 291.xx driver which seems to be a good alternative for some people.

gregrocker said:

RAID0 is not even redundant which is supposedly the R in RAID.

This was... a pretty good argument. I don't even know how to contest that or if it's even possible.

Windows 7 does not like RAID. We see nothing but problems here with RAID from an installer's and performance point of view. You'd think we would see successes occasionally, but I can't remember any.

The Dell technician came in today and I'm getting a motherboard replacement. Turns out I/O is acting weird and when it gets to 5MB or over, the machine slows to a crawl it almost looks like it's crippled. It's scheduled for this Wednesday, two days from now. Will update.

The motherboard just got replaced and I'm already using the new one. Will update.

Looks already solved. The I/O would refuse to go over 2MB and when it did, the computer slowed down to a crawl it seemed it was a Pentium II or something. Just tested, seems OK now, plus it's faster and I don't get the slowdowns I used to get. Programs start faster, load faster, I experience less FPS drops, they crash less, etc. etc.

Probably solved, will mark as so in a few days in case it doesn't freeze anymore :)

Now this was unexpected. It just froze with the new motherboard. I'm with Dell support on the phone.

Just wanted to update this so you guys know I didn't abandon this, I'm just trying to solve the final problems with Dell.