Hi, my first time here.
I have a new Dell Aurora R4, only a month old, with 32GB of RAM and a 3TB harddrive, for gaming though it isn't exclusively all I use it for. (Technically two months old, since they delayed delivery by a whole month). I apologize for not providing more detailed specifications as I am at work now, will update with the relevant information when I get home.
In any case, my problems started a little over a week ago. Boot-up was normal, logging in took a few minutes longer than it previously did. Immediately evident was that my network refused to initialize, reporting "No Internet access".
The second issue that manifested was that everything but core Windows functions took at least 20 or more minutes execute. About an hour after logging in, the network connector reports internet access. 20 minutes after that, once Firefox has booted up I can confirm that I do not actually have internet access. Or even access to any other devices attached to the LAN.
On a hunch, I ran chkdsk with the /R option. Unfortunately, underestimated the time that would take. When it ended 6 hours later, I checked the log in the Event Viewer. There were so many bad clusters that it scrolled off the log, so I could not tell how many there actually were.
This should have been the end of it, unfortunately it had no impact on my system. I decided to run it a second time, and this time it reported no errors with a count of 0KB Bad Clusters.
It was about this point that I decided to call Dell Support. After talking me through running their own support tools (which, naturally, reported all systems green), they then talked me through a factory reset with the pre-loaded image file. Immediately after I ran chkdsk /R again, which came up clean, so I thought that was over.
I then uninstalled the bundled McAfee and replace it with Avast! Free, which I have been using for years now. Everything was running smoothly until a few minutes after, when I queued Windows Update to begin downloading the patches that were reset. The system grounded back to the previous crawl so suddenly I could almost hear the squealing tires.
It was on the next boot-up that I received my first Win8 BSOD, before the login screen could appear: Page Fault In A Nonpaged Area. Immediately after the memory dump it restarted and presented me with the login screen, as if nothing had happened. Logging in showed that my condition had not changed.
Dell Support is now recommending I perform a clean re-install of Windows, which I will be performing tomorrow as the weekend begins for me then, though I am not optimistic. I highly suspect that my HDD is faulty, despite Dell's support tools saying otherwise. I would like a second opinion.
I will post more detailed specifications as well as the dump file when I get home, though I am not sure how useful it will be since it was made immediately after a reset.
Apologies for the long, ramble-y post with the missing information, but I'm at my wit's end here. For the record, I do not install hardware drivers offered through Windows Update. A couple of past incidents cured me of that compulsion.
I have a new Dell Aurora R4, only a month old, with 32GB of RAM and a 3TB harddrive, for gaming though it isn't exclusively all I use it for. (Technically two months old, since they delayed delivery by a whole month). I apologize for not providing more detailed specifications as I am at work now, will update with the relevant information when I get home.
In any case, my problems started a little over a week ago. Boot-up was normal, logging in took a few minutes longer than it previously did. Immediately evident was that my network refused to initialize, reporting "No Internet access".
The second issue that manifested was that everything but core Windows functions took at least 20 or more minutes execute. About an hour after logging in, the network connector reports internet access. 20 minutes after that, once Firefox has booted up I can confirm that I do not actually have internet access. Or even access to any other devices attached to the LAN.
On a hunch, I ran chkdsk with the /R option. Unfortunately, underestimated the time that would take. When it ended 6 hours later, I checked the log in the Event Viewer. There were so many bad clusters that it scrolled off the log, so I could not tell how many there actually were.
This should have been the end of it, unfortunately it had no impact on my system. I decided to run it a second time, and this time it reported no errors with a count of 0KB Bad Clusters.
It was about this point that I decided to call Dell Support. After talking me through running their own support tools (which, naturally, reported all systems green), they then talked me through a factory reset with the pre-loaded image file. Immediately after I ran chkdsk /R again, which came up clean, so I thought that was over.
I then uninstalled the bundled McAfee and replace it with Avast! Free, which I have been using for years now. Everything was running smoothly until a few minutes after, when I queued Windows Update to begin downloading the patches that were reset. The system grounded back to the previous crawl so suddenly I could almost hear the squealing tires.
It was on the next boot-up that I received my first Win8 BSOD, before the login screen could appear: Page Fault In A Nonpaged Area. Immediately after the memory dump it restarted and presented me with the login screen, as if nothing had happened. Logging in showed that my condition had not changed.
Dell Support is now recommending I perform a clean re-install of Windows, which I will be performing tomorrow as the weekend begins for me then, though I am not optimistic. I highly suspect that my HDD is faulty, despite Dell's support tools saying otherwise. I would like a second opinion.
I will post more detailed specifications as well as the dump file when I get home, though I am not sure how useful it will be since it was made immediately after a reset.
Apologies for the long, ramble-y post with the missing information, but I'm at my wit's end here. For the record, I do not install hardware drivers offered through Windows Update. A couple of past incidents cured me of that compulsion.
My Computer
System One
-
- OS
- Windows 8 64-bit Pro
- Computer type
- PC/Desktop
- System Manufacturer/Model
- Dell
- CPU
- Intel Core i7-3820
- Memory
- 32GB
- Graphics Card(s)
- GeForce GTX 660
- Sound Card
- Sound Blaster Recon3D PCIe
- Screen Resolution
- 1920x1080
- Hard Drives
- 3TB SATA
- Case
- Alienware Aurora R4
- Browser
- Mozilla Firefox
- Antivirus
- Avast! Free