System Freezes - "iastor error"

[Timothy Butler]

I am having serious stability issues with my Dell XPS 410 running Vista Home
premium. Every 5 minutes or so my computer will hang/freeze for anywhere
from 30 seconds to 3 minutes for no apparent reason. It doesn't matter what
I am doing from playing games to typing email (it froze while writing this).
When looking in the event viewer, the following error persists each time I
get a freeze.

The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period.

I have been in contact with Dell several times to try to get things fixed,
each time I was assured my computer would no longer freeze. Each time the
problem reoccurs. They have helped me update my Intel Matrix Storage
manager, changed some things in regedit and tried disabling some services.
None of this has helped. The last technician I reached didn't try anything -
he transferred me to Dell on call - a pay to use service... I refuse to pay
for this. My computer was shipped to me with this problem.

I am trying to be patient and I want to avoid sending the machine back. Has
anyone else had this problem or have some sort of fix? Intel's website is
not helping either. If I do have to send my system back, how do I go about
doing this? Thank you for your help.

Timothy Buler

 

[Timothy Butler]

Thank you for your reply. I am wading through the information in the forums
and will post an update after I try some of the fixes.

Timothy Butler

 

[Moray]

Timothy,
I had the same problem with my new Dell Dimension 9200.
It was due to a problem with the Firmware for the DVD - ROM drive, a Philips
model DROM6316.
If you have this model, go to the Dell support downloads site and punch in
your PC details, and you will see it in there,
It solved it for me.
HTH, Moray.

 

[Guest]

Same comp..same problem...tried this from another site and no freezes going
on 2 weeks. Take care

Good news, it looks like the problem is solved !!!
Indeed, after reporting the problem to Dell Europe, I was called by a
technician who told me that a solution had been found and how to fix the
problem. He kindly assisted me on the phone during the whole process.
(This fix applies to a Dell Dimension 9200 with two hard disks in RAID 0 on
SATA ports 0 & 1 and two CD drives on SATA ports 2 & 3)
What I had to do was move the CD drives from SATA ports 2 and 3 to ports 4
and 5. If you open your computer, you will see two orange cables coming from
the CD drives to connectors on the motherboard. Two other free connectors are
located underneath. You just have to disconnect both cables and connect them
into the lower set of connectors.
After this is done, when you restart the computer, you have to go to the
setup (F2 at startup) and change the status of the SATA ports 2, 3, 4 and 5:
Drives
SATA-2 set to OFF
SATA-3 set to OFF
SATA-4 set to ON
SATA-5 set to ON
You can then save and leave the setup. After you restart, the computer runs
smoothly.
I did this about an hour ago and didn't experience any freeze yet. I guess
the "30 second freeze syndrome" is history now

 

[Guest]

I am having serious stability issues with my Dell XPS 410 running Vista Home
premium. Every 5 minutes or so my computer will hang/freeze for anywhere
from 30 seconds to 3 minutes for no apparent reason. It doesn't matter what
I am doing from playing games to typing email (it froze while writing this).
When looking in the event viewer, the following error persists each time I
get a freeze.

The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period.

I have been in contact with Dell several times to try to get things fixed,
each time I was assured my computer would no longer freeze. Each time the
problem reoccurs. They have helped me update my Intel Matrix Storage
manager, changed some things in regedit and tried disabling some services.
None of this has helped. The last technician I reached didn't try anything -
he transferred me to Dell on call - a pay to use service... I refuse to pay
for this. My computer was shipped to me with this problem.

I am trying to be patient and I want to avoid sending the machine back. Has
anyone else had this problem or have some sort of fix? Intel's website is
not helping either. If I do have to send my system back, how do I go about
doing this? Thank you for your help.

Timothy Buler

 

[Guest]

Your not alone Tim, Those of us that bought and installed the Vista OS are
having the same problem. I haven't found a fix as yet, but suspect it has to
do with Nvidia Graphics Drivers. Neither dose windows hav e a fix. I've tried
a few fixes on the internet but none of them worked for over an hour. Good
luck.

ps. Our answer to this problem is a windows and they don't seem to care.