Dell's Optiplex 7010 mini tower SSD hang-up issue

Hi everyone:

I was curious if anyone else experienced this issue? I have a Dell OptiPlex 7010 desktop/mini tower that I bought off the official Dell site. I configured that mini tower to have an SSD drive as the main drive, which I like very much, except one very annoying issue. Sometimes out of the blue Windows 7 will hang up, I can't click anything and the mouse starts spinning in a circle. This continues on for about half a minute and then it always comes back to life. Suddenly I start getting all my previous clicks moving windows, opening things, etc, all at once. This happened at least a dozen of times by now and I started to notice that when this happens the HDD/SSD LED on the case glows solid, which made me suspect that there's something going on with the drive itself.

Does anyone know what's going on and how to fix this?

PS. I tried contacting Dell support about this issue but they are pretty useless. I spent several hours in a chat with a guy once that eventually simply hung up on me. Then I emailed someone at Dell, for which the guy replied with instructions to run their hard drive diagnostic tool, which I did, that did not show any errors. (Note that I don't have a hard drive, it's a solid state drive.) I replied to the guy only to never hear from him again.... So I think I'm pretty much done with the Dell support

In addition is this a Clean Install or did you clone the bloated Dell factory preinstall? Did you follow the same best practices as in Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 - particularly as it applies to drivers - during the install?

If so go over your install closely using Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7
to establish a clean boot, check the logs and system resources for clues, test the RAM, etc.

Thank you, guys.

@Northernsoul55: I'm not even sure what SSD it came with. How do I find out?

@gregrocker: No, this mini-tower came pre-installed with this SSD. I uninstalled all their bloat-ware though. The computer is virtually new (about 3-4 months.) We use it as our office/font desk machine so there's virtually very low chance of any malware infection on it.

As for the event log then there's nothing recorded in it. I checked. The only error that seems to be repeating throughout it is this:

Event filter with query "SELECT * FROM __InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60 WHERE TargetInstance ISA "Win32_Processor" AND TargetInstance.LoadPercentage > 99" could not be reactivated in namespace "//./root/CIMV2" because of error 0x80041003. Events cannot be delivered through this filter until the problem is corrected.

Device Manager will tell you the type of drive that's in your computer. Then you can check for a firmware update for the drive.

In first post you said you configured the PC to have bootable OS on SSD. If you're saying now that it came with WIn7 on the SSD, exactly what did you configure and how?

Probably best to see a screenshot of Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image - Windows 7 Help Forums.

@DeaconFrost: I get this when I bring up the device manager (see attached). The Canon is our printer, then "My passport" is an external hdd. This tower also comes with a regular hard drive as disc D: so I'm not sure which one is which. (Disc D: is rarely used though, so it's not a problem in this case.)

@gregrocker: What I meant by having configured my PC in the first post is what Dell provides on their web site before you order a computer. They have a web page that lets you select the type of hardware for it. I did not mess with it myself after I got it though.

Ok I see what you mean by configure now.

Please post up the requested picture of Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image - Windows 7 Help Forums.

The next time it hangs I would rightclick the task bar or if necessary Control-Alt-Delete to open the Task Manager, immediately look at whether its CPU or RAM at 100%, then order the related column to see what Process(s) is/are causing the hang:



Configure the Task Manager>View tab to show PID so you can immediately click to the Services tab to identify the the Service causing the problem.

@Northernsoul55: Thanks. I installed the firmware flash. I should admit -- scary stuff :) Hopefully that is it. If you don't hear from me then it probably means that it fixed the problem. (I hope it's just a sloppy driver that caused the issue and not something wrong with the hardware itself.)

@gregrocker: I wish I could run the Task Manager. As I said when this hang-up happens nothing works (well, except that I can move the mouse.) Plus the issue comes up very sporadically. Maybe once a week or so. So there's no way to predict it.