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Question

Dell's Optiplex 7010 mini tower SSD hang-up issue

May 9, 2013 7:40AM PDT

Hi everyone:

I was curious if anyone else experienced this issue? I have a Dell OptiPlex 7010 desktop/mini tower that I bought off the official Dell site. I configured that mini tower to have an SSD drive as the main drive, which I like very much, except one very annoying issue. Sometimes out of the blue Windows 7 will hang up, I can't click anything and the mouse starts spinning in a circle. This continues on for about half a minute and then it always comes back to life. Suddenly I start getting all my previous clicks moving windows, opening things, etc, all at once. This happened at least a dozen of times by now and I started to notice that when this happens the HDD/SSD LED on the case glows solid, which made me suspect that there's something going on with the drive itself.

Does anyone know what's going on and how to fix this?

PS. I tried contacting Dell support about this issue but they are pretty useless. I spent several hours in a chat with a guy once that eventually simply hung up on me. Then I emailed someone at Dell, for which the guy replied with instructions to run their hard drive diagnostic tool, which I did, that did not show any errors. (Note that I don't have a hard drive, it's a solid state drive.) I replied to the guy only to never hear from him again.... So I think I'm pretty much done with the Dell support Sad

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Yes. and no.
May 9, 2013 8:10AM PDT

Right or wrong I'm having to update firmware, BIOS and reload the OS. I can't offer any step by step as each machine differs. Sometimes I toss out the SSD and put in a normal drive.


You have a fine warranty issue so be sure to let them try 3 times and then ask them to replace it because its a lemon (or get a refund.)

In short, the industry is still in beta testing.
Bob

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Thanks...
May 9, 2013 8:48AM PDT

Well, that is the issue. This is our office machine and I can't just send it back to them without having something else instead.... Do Dell consider cases like that?

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Only for business sales.
May 9, 2013 8:57AM PDT

I don't know your warranty or such situation but the issue is not unheard of.

But this sounds very dangerous to me. Computers get infected and fail all the time. But no need to write about that here.
Bob

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OK.
May 10, 2013 5:54AM PDT

OK. Thanks. Point taken!

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I think I got it...
May 17, 2013 10:07AM PDT

For those who also runs into the same issue. After a long search this seems to have solved my problem:
http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/DriverDetails?driverId=0FW0X

That is the Liteon LCT-128M3S SSDR Firmware VQDC update and although I ran it on Windows 7 (and not Windows 8 as that page suggests) I haven't seen those hang-up for awhile... keeping my fingers crossed.

PS. Lesson for the future -- NEVER buy again from Dell!

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Re:Lesso for the future-- Never buy from Dell again
May 17, 2013 10:44AM PDT
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typo
May 17, 2013 10:47AM PDT

meant Lesson

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Firmware. Nod.
May 17, 2013 12:26PM PDT

It sounds just like my prior run ins. I can't guess why such is on the market except we are being used as crash test dummies.
Bob