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#1
Nvidia Serial ATA driver BSOD and that curious 100% HDD usage bug
Hi, I've posted on these forums about an issue I've had with my hard drive going to 100% usage on occasion. It stopped happening for a while, then it started happening again recently. If you don't know what the HDD going to 100% usage does, it basically stops all functionality (programs crash, certain services stop, etc.) until the problem stops. I left my Resource Monitor open on the disk usage tab and found that dllhost.exe was the problem, so now I figure it's because of a faulty driver. These also don't happen at any particular time, just randomly and for a few minutes. Then everything goes back to normal.
Which brings me to my next problem, unrelated or not. I recently got a Cavalry 1 TB external HD with eSATA compatibility, and have been using it to store some media files. The problem, though, is that if I connect via eSATA while the laptop is on, the laptop will be fine for a few seconds as it tries to identify what's just connected, then BSOD with "nvstor64.sys" (one of the drivers for the NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA controller) listed. It'll then auto-reboot, and BSOD immediately after the "Starting Windows" animation begins, and restart again. If I start Windows normally after that, then nothing will go wrong. And if I set everything up while the laptop is off, it'll also BSOD on startup.
The problems seem pretty different, but I've read around that a faulty SATA driver can cause HDD usage issues. If anyone knows what's going on here, I'd be happy to find out.
Note: I don't have any idea why this happens too, but I'll get HDD usage spikes that last 1-2 seconds every few minutes when my laptop is running off battery power, but not when it's plugged in.
Dell Studio XPS, I'll get the rest of the build information later
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Nvidia GeForce 9500M (GF 9400MG + GF 9200MGS)
Intel Core2 Duo CPU P8700 @ 2.53 GHz 2.53 GHz
Yes, I've checked, double checked and triple checked to make sure my drivers are up to date, you don't need to tell me to do that first.