BSOD with Intel 520 Series 240Gb on Alienware M17xR3 Laptop. Any Suggestions?

[idata]

I have an Alienware M17xR3 Sandy Bridge laptop w/ Core i7-2820QM, 16Gb RAM, Radeon 6870M w/Intel 3000 graphics, and 2 SATA 3 HDD ports (not RAID), BIOS setting for ACHI , running Windows 7 Pro. Using current Toolbox v3.03 and tuned accordingly.

Until last month, it had 2-320 Series SSD's (160Gb) and they worked perfectly. I just ran out of space and upgraded to the new 520 series. Two of them. Shortly after I installed the new drives I started getting BSOD's every few hours or so. Could not fix, so I reinstalled Windows fresh. Not a fix. Called Intel and was shown how to deep format the drive during the Win 7 install pgm. Did it. Nice, but not a fix. Returned the drive to the store. New drive arrives, a clean install, and the BSOD returns.

I reinstalled the 320 Series SSD and a fresh install of windows. Works perfect.

I am hoping someone has a suggestion how to fix this. I can not return these 2 new 240Gb drives. I need to make them work. I am a big intel fan. Your thoughts. Thanks.

[idata]

Hi,

I have what may be a very similar problem. I have an Alienware M17x-R3, and after several Crucial M4 SSD failures, opted for an Intel 520 SSD - on the basis they had been thoroughly tested and that this laptop was based on an Intel chipset.

I used the Intel 520 SSD for around two weeks, during which time, I experienced frequent BSOD and occasional

hangs (approximately 30 seconds to 1 minute). Sometimes I would get a single BSOD, other times it could be several in a short space of time. Due to these problems, I have been forced to go back to the original Seagate 320GB HDD that shipped with the laptop.

My laptop is configured in RAID mode, which I understand to be the recommended mode, but I do not have any RAID configured. I was using the Intel/Crucial drive for the OS and an older 750GB Western Digital Scorpio Black for data. I have BIOS version A10 installed, and am aware that version A09 was specifically released to address "SATA SSD compatibility issues". However, the main result of version A09 was also to disable SATA III 6Gbps speeds, but Dell may have made other changes too. The following link states these changes were to address stability and random BSOD errors.

https://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kcs/document?c=us&cs=19&docid=530483&doc... SATA speed drops to 3 Gbps on Alienware M17x R3 systems after BIOS update A09 | Dell

I have spoken to Dell, but they refuse to discuss issues with third party hardware, even if it may be their hardware at fault. It would be useful if anyone at Intel can look into these issues, as so far my SSD experience has been that they are a waste of money!

If it helps, I've been checking the event viewer after any problems. In particular, after a BSOD, there aren't any errors with the iaStor device or anything apparently useful in any minidumps. The only error I've managed to capture in the event viewer was after one of the hangs, so here it is in case it's useful:

http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">

9

2

0

0x80000000000000

9901

System

\Device\Ide\iaStor0

0F0005000100000000000000090004C00100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Kevin