Dell 8400. Problems with Western Digital SATA HD??

[aggie04ci]

Not sure how to phrase all of my problem as I'm pretty clueless when it comes to this stuff. In short, I had a HD failure a week or two ago. My Dell was under warranty, so they sent a guy out to replace the drive. He comes with a Western Digital Drive (my original drive was a Maxtor), plops it in the computer, puts my Windows Installation CD in (says it has SP2 on it) and starts the installation process and leaves. The WD drive is listed in system info as a "WD800JD-75LSA0" if that helps any.

He doesn't hit F6 to load any drivers. The installation fails, so I go to restart it. Fails again. I call Dell support and they have me delete the partitions on the drive and start over again. Still don't load any drivers from a floppy. This time for whatever reason the install works fine. However, I'm getting these reoccuring errors in my event viewer and think there is some sort of problem with the HD. I'm skeptical that no drivers were loaded during the Windows installation because I went out myself and bought a new Maxtor SATA HD and installed Windows on it. The instructions had me dload some driver files to a floppy, which I then hit F6 in the Windows installation process to load these files. Everything works fine on that drive so makes me wonder why this wasn't done on the Western Digital.

Here is a link to the 2 errors I keep getting. They often come up in the log at times when I restart the computer, but not always. Another common time it sometimes comes up is around 6am. Only thing I could think of with this time was its when my AVG AV program scans. But again, doens't show up at this time every day so who knows.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b350/dicedealer18/ClintERRORlog.jpg

Any clue on these errors? I noticed the one listed iastor.sys and I found that file in my system info. Here's a screen of this if anyone needs it:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b350/dicedealer18/SystemInfo4.jpg

Is this looking correct to you guys? Should this HD show up in the IDE section as opposed to the SCSI section? My system BIOS has a Sata operation section. It has 4 options in it. Its selected to run in "RAID Autodetect/AHCI otherwise" mode. (I don't have RAID, btw). Other options include "RAID Autodetect/ATA otherwise", "RAID on", "Combination (SATA/PATA)".

Also, here is a screen of my HD info in the disk section of my system info. I'm still confused how it shows up in a port under SCSI, yet the HD doesn't show up in the SCSI section on the other screen.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b350/dicedealer18/SystemInfo3.jpg

Again, any problem in what you've seen so far?? Finally, I don't know how to tell what my motherboard is, but here is a screen that maybe you guys can use to tell what it is. I understand and have read that certain motherboards need the SATA drivers loaded, others have them preloaded.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b350/dicedealer18/SystemInfo5.jpg

I'm clueless on this whole thing. I want to believe my HD is working properly, yet I doubt I should be getting error msgs in my event viewer like this. And I'd like to finally get an answer to whether or not any additional drivers should have been loaded from a floppy when XP was loaded on this HD.

Any help anyone can give would be appreciated!!

 

[anandtechrocks]

Wow, that sounds like one confusing problem. My brother has a Dell 8400 just like you and when I reformatted his computer I had to download some SATA drivers on a floppy and do the whole F6 deal. But, the only reason I did that is because the Windows XP Pro (SP2) installer did not recognize his HD initially. Yours did so I'm a little confused about that. Honestly, I have no clue about the errors.

Dell motherboards are proprietary, but you can find out what chipset (and a bunch of other stuff about your computer) you have by using this program: PC Wizard. Are there any performance issues associated with these errors? Do programs lag or the computer crash and that is why you are concerned? I'm sorry I'm not much help, but I'm pretty clueless too.

 

[FlyingPenguin]

Depending on the controller SATA drives can show up as either an IDE device or a SCSI device.

Did you install the drivers after installing the OS? You MUST install the Intel Mobo drivers first before anything. Just pop the driver CD in the computer. If you don't have one, you can download the drivers from Dell's website after entering your service tag.

If it's under warranty I'd insist they come back out and finish the job and install the OS clean for you. There might be other hardware issues. Maybe you have a bad mobo (possibly a bad controller) and there was nothing wrong with the drive.

Did he swap out the drive data cable? He should have. Half the time it's a bad cable or corrosion on the contacts,

 

[aggie04ci]

I may call Dell back to fix it like you suggested, guess I'm just nervous since they didn't do it right the first time. By the mobo drivers, do you mean chipset drivers? Dell support told me to install certain drivers after installing the OS (using their resource CD), and had me install video/audio/etc. But even though I saw an option to install chipset drivers, she told me I didn't have to do that.

Guess she was wrong. uhoh.

 

[bucwylde23]

No clue

 

[bucwylde23]

 

[FlyingPenguin]

You absolutely HAVE TO install the chipset driver. It should have been the first driver installed. After installing it I would recommend re-installing the other major drivers.

I don't think your problem is related to the chipset drivers, but try it. If you still have problems I'd get them back out there. As I said before, it's possible you have a problem with the controller or you may have a bad power supply that's killing your hard drives (I've seen that many times and it happened to me on my own rig).

The techs that Dell sends out work for a local company and are sub-contracted. If they're in a hurry to go to another job they'll start the process like that one did and walk away if you let them.

I personally think that's bad form since the average non-techie could run into problems installing the drivers afterwards, but a Windows install does mean sitting around for at least 45 minutes twiddling your fingers.

 

[aggie04ci]

Penguin,

I had installed the chipset drivers off the resource CD a few days ago, well after the drivers for the audio/video/etc were installed. Do you mean I should re-install those other drivers off the CD again? Bit confused at that process, as in do I need to uninstall those drivers first and then install again, or can I simply pop the resource CD in and install over top of the drivers that I already have.

I'm starting to wonder if I should just erase and format the whole drive, and install XP again from scratch......and make sure I load the drivers in the right order this time. Not sure if that will fix the errors though.

 

[aggie04ci]

also, I might buy another SATA cable and switch it with the one in the computer to see if that is the problem since you mentioned that could be a possibility. He didn't switch the cable out to my knowledge.