Re: The wait is over again, the replacement for the M1330 has shipped!
Matt, would you be willing to ship one of the two systems to me so I can take a look at it and do some testing? If you are, I will send you a pre-paid waybill to have it shipped directly to my desk here in Round Rock TX (Dell HQ). Unfortunately, we don't have one here already that I can play with to see if I can reproduce the problem (outside of engineering, the customers get the systems first
).
[Edit so I don't double post]
I've done some digging on things that could be causing the poor performance while in AHCI and have a few questions that will help me better understand what is happening.
On the first system you mentioned that you installed a different version of Vista to better meet your needs with the system. When you did that installation, did you load the Intel SATA driver (at the F6 prompt)? After getting the OS installed, did you start the driver installation with the Dell Notebook System and Intel Chipset software? The Notebook System software is basically Dell extensions to the chipset software to ensure the OS can properly access/talk to the components in the system, so it is possible that leaving that off could cause the problem.
When you switched from AHCI to ATA mode in the BIOS, did you get a BSOD (STOP 0x7b)? From everything I have read you should have, and if you did not, that might indicate where the problem is.
Am I correct that you tested the second system before doing an OS reload to see how it performed?
From talking to a few coworkers, we agree with your diagnosis that the problem is related to the drivers (missing, wrong ones, or incorrectly configured) as the most likely cause. Getting more info on exactly what steps you took on the reinstall would definitely help me to figure this out.
Larry
Dell Customer Advocate