Dell complaints

xp.user.1337 · Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 7:50 pm Post subject: Drive has been overtemp

Hello this is a odd dell system im looking at for someone. It was very very very slow. Yes i know its a celeron with 128 MB with XP. But i got a 500 MHZ with XP that runs faster. Ive also had a 400 MHZ with XP that ran alot faster. But anyway i reloaded the OS used the dell recovery disk. Anyway it was still slow also i could have swore the disk formatted in NTFS because the first attemp of the recovery it failed and i rebooted and i got NTLDR. But anyway i tried the restore again. It worked and the drive is FAT32. I noticed checkdisk showing 80KB in bad sectors. So i downloaded the drive diagnostics from seagate. Its a Maxtor drive but seagate aquired maxtor and i got seatools. When i try and run the test i get a message "drive has been overtemp" if i continue the test it finds no errors. I just wander what that message means. I have found out the drive may have overheated. I felt of the drive and it was not all that hot.
I did slave the drive to my computer and scanned it with AVG Antispy. It did not find anything. But its strange the icons disappear and i have them all checked to be shown.
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Starman97 · Dances with Hate Joined: 05 Feb 2007 Posts: 103

That sounds like a persistant log, something saved in the controller NVRAM.
The drive at some time it it's life was run hot, beyond what the manufacturer will warranty. I'd pitch it and get another drive.

Rocke_T_Sinetist · Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 11:13 am Post subject:

Substitute the drive in a working computer. If the drive makes the other computer slow down, the drive is the problem. Later Intel chipsets won't boot to bootsectors written on old chipsets, the change was definitely in effect in 2005, so don't be surprised if it doesn't work at all. (Cute, Intel. Thanks for nothing.) But unless the drive is having to reread sectors over and over to get around errors, drives don't slow computers down 'that' much.

The overtemp message may mean nothing, but it may mean the drive's reliability is compromised. I can't explain how you got XP to install FAT32, that's not supposed to happen.

If this is a 2400 or earlier, make sure the CPU mode in F2 BIOS is NOT set to 'compatible'.
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Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

xp.user.1337 · Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 7:50 pm Post subject:

Its not a 2400. This is a system before the 2400. Its the very first XP. No servicepacks. Its a SmartStep 100D. I treid dell online support and they said i had to call a number for support. I put in my servicetag and it would not even bring the system up. Dell tech said they had a red flag on the system and there were some issues. I told them they were the ones with the issues.
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Rocke_T_Sinetist · Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 8:47 pm Post subject:

BIOS before the change from Phoenix don't have the 'compatible' setting, and BIOS after 2400 don't either.
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Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'