Hello!
I've owned this Dell XPS 15 for around a year a half with no problems at all. It has served me well during my travels up until recently. Though I'm not sure if any of the issues are linked, I figured it would be a safe bet to list them all out, just to be safe.
It first started a couple of months ago when my computer first froze for about 15 seconds, blacked out, and came back displaying a warning that the Intel graphics driver had crashed (something to that extent). I thought nothing of it, given it quickly resumed normal operation without a hitch. This continued to happen maybe once a week, but the quick recovery always followed.
Fast forward to three days ago. I was downloading a game on steam, Dead Space 2, and browsing the web when I was hit with the same freezing, though this time it lasted a little bit longer and ended with a blue screen. I've gotten the blue screen once or twice before, but nothing had ever come of it. Just as before, my computer quickly re-booted and I resumed the download. Stepped away for 10 - 15 minutes and came back to find my computer displaying "Operation System Not Found."
I restarted my computer and was asked to select a source in which to load windows from. I selected my hard drive and again it displayed "Operation System Not Found." At this point, I had come to the conclusion that my hard drive had crashed. To be sure, I took out my hard drive, plugged it up to a Seagate GoFlex adapter, and plugged it up to another computer. To my surprise, I was able to fully browse all of my files and the hard drive worked with no problems. I then plugged it back into my laptop and selected the "Diagnostic" option on the boot menu.
After having found no problems with itself, my computer re-booted and loaded Windows as normal, albeit a little bit slower. Excited, I logged in and immediately noticed a significant performance drop and a consistent "freezing" for 5 - 10 seconds occurring every 20 - 30 seconds. Regardless, I began to run a virus scan utilizing Norton which took considerably longer than normal and returned no results. Frustrated, I restarted to computer only to be met with the same "Operation System Not Found" display as before! I re-ran the Diagnostics, rebooted my system, and found Windows 7 again. Suffering the same performance drop and freezing as before, I downloaded AVG to see if it could find anything that Norton might have missed, but returned nothing.
Now, I am here. I've tried everything that I can think of, but still have not been able to identify what the problem is. In games or while playing media, the periodic freezing continues effecting everything including sound. The "Operation System Not Found" warning displays every time I shut down or hibernate the system. I've checked the processes and am not able to identify anything out of the ordinary. CPU and Memory usage levels are normal and do not spike during the freezes.
Writing this alone has taken me 15 minutes longer than it would have normally because of the damned freezing. :banghead:
Any help would be appreciated!!
I've owned this Dell XPS 15 for around a year a half with no problems at all. It has served me well during my travels up until recently. Though I'm not sure if any of the issues are linked, I figured it would be a safe bet to list them all out, just to be safe.
It first started a couple of months ago when my computer first froze for about 15 seconds, blacked out, and came back displaying a warning that the Intel graphics driver had crashed (something to that extent). I thought nothing of it, given it quickly resumed normal operation without a hitch. This continued to happen maybe once a week, but the quick recovery always followed.
Fast forward to three days ago. I was downloading a game on steam, Dead Space 2, and browsing the web when I was hit with the same freezing, though this time it lasted a little bit longer and ended with a blue screen. I've gotten the blue screen once or twice before, but nothing had ever come of it. Just as before, my computer quickly re-booted and I resumed the download. Stepped away for 10 - 15 minutes and came back to find my computer displaying "Operation System Not Found."
I restarted my computer and was asked to select a source in which to load windows from. I selected my hard drive and again it displayed "Operation System Not Found." At this point, I had come to the conclusion that my hard drive had crashed. To be sure, I took out my hard drive, plugged it up to a Seagate GoFlex adapter, and plugged it up to another computer. To my surprise, I was able to fully browse all of my files and the hard drive worked with no problems. I then plugged it back into my laptop and selected the "Diagnostic" option on the boot menu.
After having found no problems with itself, my computer re-booted and loaded Windows as normal, albeit a little bit slower. Excited, I logged in and immediately noticed a significant performance drop and a consistent "freezing" for 5 - 10 seconds occurring every 20 - 30 seconds. Regardless, I began to run a virus scan utilizing Norton which took considerably longer than normal and returned no results. Frustrated, I restarted to computer only to be met with the same "Operation System Not Found" display as before! I re-ran the Diagnostics, rebooted my system, and found Windows 7 again. Suffering the same performance drop and freezing as before, I downloaded AVG to see if it could find anything that Norton might have missed, but returned nothing.
Now, I am here. I've tried everything that I can think of, but still have not been able to identify what the problem is. In games or while playing media, the periodic freezing continues effecting everything including sound. The "Operation System Not Found" warning displays every time I shut down or hibernate the system. I've checked the processes and am not able to identify anything out of the ordinary. CPU and Memory usage levels are normal and do not spike during the freezes.
Writing this alone has taken me 15 minutes longer than it would have normally because of the damned freezing. :banghead:
Any help would be appreciated!!