A definite ‘OMG moment’ with a computer is when you boot it up and see an error message indicating a problem with your hard drive.
My OMG moment this evening looked like this:
Doubly alarming as it happened after both hard drives in the system – a brand new Dell XPS 420 I received less than three weeks ago – were replaced under warranty less than a week ago.
The PC did boot into Windows Vista successfully so the first thing was to make sure anything essential on the drives was copied to the network hard drive. As it’s a new machine, I have little irreplaceable on it yet.
The hard drives in the XPS 420 are set up in a RAID 0 configuration. A quick check online uncovered quite a bit of commentary where RAID problems, XPS 420 and Intel are all mentioned in the same breath, such as this recent discussion forum thread.
In any event, I called XPS Premium Support – something I hadn’t imagined doing again – and spent an hour on the phone and connected remotely with a helpful and knowledgeable service agent.
The first thing he did was visit the Dell UK support site and download and install the Intel Matrix Storage Manager. What happens now is that the console confirms an error with the RAID setup as it now appears every time the computer boots into Windows. That follows the error screen at bootup itself – the screenshot above – which now appears on every bootup right after the Dell logo screen.
What the Dell support agent told me was pretty interesting. The problem I saw is all to do with the Intel RAID controller and nothing to do with the hard drives themselves. He said Dell will be releasing a patch next week that will address the issue, meaning no more RAID controller errors.
According to the agent, quite a few XPS 420 owners have experienced this same error. I don’t know the actual number but that’s pretty alarming news.
Whatever a possible solution, I have no confidence in any kind of RAID setup on this computer. As the Dell agent told me, setting up the PC with two normal hard drives rather than in a RAID configuration would mean no such issues as I’ve experienced.
Assuming the hard drives are perfectly fine, this seems a route that provides quite a bit of confidence and assurance, certainly more than I have right now.
So that’s what I plan to do – start again (again!), install the OS, drivers, utilities, etc. Need to devote time, and soon.
Although I think the XPS 420 is a great computer, this is not a promising start to my overall XPS 420 experience.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
The exact problem happened to me not only once but three times..
Dell replaced hard disks for me twice but the error has come back again now for the third time..
I need the data on those disks so..I’m not sure what the hell I’m going to do..
I ‘ve had a XPS420 for fourteen months now ! , I’ve installed the operating system three times now ! This problem is still going on , at the moment we changed it from RAID0 to RAID1
and now my hard drives are degarded ! I’ve had new CPU’s new 4×1 Gb RAM , a new motherboard , a new graphic’s card (nvidia 8800GT ) and a new XI-fI sound card !!!!!
Does any one know if the XPS 420 can be sent up without RAID , because i’ve tried without any luck ! ( is the controller on the motherboard ? ) I do think this is the problem ! Dell tells me this is rare ! I’m finding out it isn’t !!
Hi Andy. Same problems from Dec 2007. The hardware is ok I feel. I haven’t installed the OS or any hardware bits at all. The problem is down to Intel Matrix Storage Manager. The last week has been particularly awful. It’s been breaking down 3 times a day. I rang DELL this Indian guy sent me the following email which seems to have worked so far. I am pretty confident right now that the issue might have been resolved:”
a)Restart the computer.
b)As soon as you see the dell logos tap F12 to get into the boot device menu.
c)In the boot device menu select boot from utility partition. If utility partition is not present, you can insert the resource CD and follow the same F12 option and select “Onboard or USB CD ROM drive”.
d)You will get two options. Please select the test memory first. This will take some time. After the test is complete select “Test System”.
e)Select express test.
f)Once the express test is done, select the custom test.
***you might get an error code 650F:136C no media present while running the test on the DVD drive nothing to worry it does not mean the drive is faulty, click ok and continue testing.*********
g)Run the custom test on the hard drive.
If while running the test on the hard drive you get an error message, please don’t stop running the test and continue with it. Count how many times you get the error and stop counting once it exceeds 20.
If the diagnostics pass, it will indicate that it is only a corrupt software which is causing the issue. ”
The whole tests took more than 12 hours and once I restarted the pc it downloaded new and vital updates and so far it’s going fine.
Hope you fix your xps 420
Make sure you upgrade the firmware on the HDD for these machines. The XPS 420 had some serious problems with RAID and certaing HDDs being shipped early on. Raid keeps unexpectedly going in to degraded.
The solution was to update the firmware on the HDD themselves. Dell published “urgent” firmware updates on their support website for various different HDD models which fixed the RAID problems.
Look in the DELL support site at the SATA Drives section.