Elite e9150t Feezes/Locks up

[LonghornBoy]

Had an e9150t delivered on 7/9 and opened a support ticket on 7/29 due to daily system freezes.  After spending over 7 hours on the phone with them running various diagnostics, they agreed to do a CSO.  I currently have v1.03 of the motherboard as well.

Question:  For those who have received new motherboards, was your data intact or had it been wiped?  Considering that I'll be without the computer for a couple of weeks and was warned that the data may be erased, I'm considering a refund.

  -LB

[Cee-Cee]

LonghornBoy, I don't know what a CSO is, but I would ask for a brand spanking new computer.  You should do a complete backup of your data (get an external USB hard drive) as I did, because I got a new one and because I erased the disc of any data by doing a HP System Recovery before I sent it back.  Besides you do not want anyone having access to your files.  I suspect that you want a new motherboard, Pegatron v1.04.  Good luck.

[LonghornBoy]

Yes.  I spoke with HP Shopping a little while ago and they actually recommended a new computer over a repaired one.  I purchased an eSATA drive a little while ago and am now backing it up.

  Thanks,

    -LB

[Cee-Cee]

LonghornBoy, I noticed that you said that you have an external eSATA drive.  Are you having trouble with its connection?  When I connect my drive to the external eSATA conector, when I boot up it is there (according to Windows Explorer) but 1/2 hour to 1 hour later I hear a beep and it disappears without any error or informational message.  When I hook it up through the USB connector (it has both options), this does not happen.  I have a 500GB Western Digital in a IOGEAR box.  What kind of external drive do you have?  There is another series of threads about this on another HP board (see "External eSATA Hard Drive suddenly disappears" for the full story of my problem and someone else's).  Do you have RAID1 (redundant backup)?

Good luck on your replacement.  Keep us informed as to whether the lockups stopped with the replacement and if the motherboard version that they sent you with the replacement.

[LonghornBoy]

Funny you should mention that; because yes, I just had the eSATA connection lockup during a copy operation and I've had to fall back to USB.  Thinking it might have been the drive, I tested it on my wife's laptop and the drive appears to be fine. Does the new motherboard (v1.04) address this issue, or should I expect it to continue to be a problem?

I currently have the desktop configured for RAID 0 (as was my old Dell); and I have not experienced any issues with it.

Sadly, this is my first HP; and so far, I've had more issues with it in less than a month than any other computer I've owned in the last 20 years.  HP's reputation used to be that they engineered solid hardware...

  -LB

[skinny_sc]

And the hits just keep on coming, huh, CeeCee? If it ends up that you were talking about the v1.04 board not working with eSATA properly, that's no good either. That would make me want to just refuse shipment and send the replacement straight back for refund. I'm not spending that kind of money for something that doesn't work 100%.

Let us know if you are talking about the new machine, or that was the old machine. Thanks!

[eots]

To stop an eSATA drive from going to sleep you have to completely disable all power saving features for the hard drive.  I have a Seagate FreeAgent drive and it has a utility to turn off the drives internal power saving, which has a default of 30 minutes.  I also had to disable all power saving in Windows.   The eSATA drive hasn't disappeared since. 

[Cee-Cee]

eots, thanks for the info.  If I can find how to change the power savings settings directly on my WD5000KS drive, it sounds like that should work.  On Vista (Control Panel) they only let you control the display and the computer as to how fast they fall sleep (a/k/a the bimbo factor).  They don't let you control the drives from Vista.

LonghornBoy and skinny_sc:  Take a look at eots' response above regarding the power savings settings.  I have the same problem on v1.04 motherboard as I did on the v1.03 in this regard.  But, hopefully eots' answer will solve the problem.  I will let you know if I can figure out how to change the power savings on the drive and if it is a solution.

[eots]

You can change the power settings for connected hard drives in Vista.  Go to control panel and open the power options, then select "high performance" and click on the "change plan settings" and on the next screen click on "change advanced power settings" and you will find the hard disk on the next screen.  I set my hard disk to never turn off.

[eots]

Has anyone else had a problem with the top 2 USB ports on the front of the system not working?  On the rare occassion that my system doesn't freeze after the initial startup then the front USB ports at the top of the case don't work but the bottom one does.  When I shutdown and restart the system again then all the USB ports work.  Yet another issue with this crap 1.03 motherboard!