- Aug 17, 2013
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NOTE: I know this is long, but I've highlighted any important parts with bold. There are a lot of excess details so that you (the reader) can understand my issue the best you can.
Skip this paragraph to get to the actual issue.
I little backstory, I received a "broken" Dell Latitude E6420 from an IT department at a college, and I was able to fix it up with a few issues for under $30. This was in early of July. At the beginning (not sure if this is related to my problem), this computer had an issue of a flickering back light on the monitor. It would work fine while plugged in, but when crazy when on battery power. This reoccurred non-stop for about a week and a half. I came back one day, and it stopped and has never bothered me again.
I can't quite remember when it started, but about every 1-2 weeks I'm forced to restore windows to stop System Interrupts from taking up 10-18% of my CPU (I'm aware it's not an actual process). While System Interrupts starts acting up, my computer also freezes completely, and then I get the Blue Screen of Death with a DPC Watchdog Violation.
I figured out each time I get this issue as well; randomly when I start my computer up one day, System Interrupts will just start acting up again. Because I can just restore my computer and the issue is fixed, this makes me assume that it is not a hardware issue. It makes me think that some setting just gets "flipped on" in Windows and causes all these conflicts.
There are three things that I can think of that I did around the time that this started happening (I can't remember quite when this started).
The first is that after I installed all my drivers (new installation of Windows) and programs, I figured I'd update my BIOS. Later I figured out that this was a no no. I can't remember what issue I had then (might be this System Interrupts issue), but I did reset the BIOS back to the version before.
The second is installing a hard drive caddy, which allows me to replace the DVD drive for a hard drive; I've heard that DPC Watchdog Violation usually is from a hard drive issue. I just have a feeling that this isn't too compatible with the system, as the DVD drive port (even though a SATA), is smaller than the port on the hard drive. The hard drive caddy adapter allows for the hard drive to be put into this smaller SATA port for the DVD drive.
The third is updating windows with the Anniversary Update. I've heard this update has tons of issues. And because this issue happens every 1-2 weeks, I don't believe it ever crossed my mind that the update was causing it. Then 10 days passed, and by the time I thought of going back to normal windows, it was already too late (unless I want to reinstall all of Windows with my Windows 10 Installation).
I've been living with this issue for months, and it's not horrible, except that I have to keep system protection on (restore), which is writing loads of data to my SSD. I've also had this issue bother me while in class, causing me to have to fix it while in class and just take notes on paper.
System
Intel Core i5-2540m
Intel HD Graphics 3000/nVidia NVS 4200m
Samsung Evo 850 250GB SSD
Toshiba 5400RPM HDD 500GB
4 GB Crucial RAM
Windows 10 Anniversary
BIOS: A07 (newest: A23)
So I'd really appreciate any advice that anyone has.
Thanks in advance,
Snake
Skip this paragraph to get to the actual issue.
I little backstory, I received a "broken" Dell Latitude E6420 from an IT department at a college, and I was able to fix it up with a few issues for under $30. This was in early of July. At the beginning (not sure if this is related to my problem), this computer had an issue of a flickering back light on the monitor. It would work fine while plugged in, but when crazy when on battery power. This reoccurred non-stop for about a week and a half. I came back one day, and it stopped and has never bothered me again.
I can't quite remember when it started, but about every 1-2 weeks I'm forced to restore windows to stop System Interrupts from taking up 10-18% of my CPU (I'm aware it's not an actual process). While System Interrupts starts acting up, my computer also freezes completely, and then I get the Blue Screen of Death with a DPC Watchdog Violation.
I figured out each time I get this issue as well; randomly when I start my computer up one day, System Interrupts will just start acting up again. Because I can just restore my computer and the issue is fixed, this makes me assume that it is not a hardware issue. It makes me think that some setting just gets "flipped on" in Windows and causes all these conflicts.
There are three things that I can think of that I did around the time that this started happening (I can't remember quite when this started).
The first is that after I installed all my drivers (new installation of Windows) and programs, I figured I'd update my BIOS. Later I figured out that this was a no no. I can't remember what issue I had then (might be this System Interrupts issue), but I did reset the BIOS back to the version before.
The second is installing a hard drive caddy, which allows me to replace the DVD drive for a hard drive; I've heard that DPC Watchdog Violation usually is from a hard drive issue. I just have a feeling that this isn't too compatible with the system, as the DVD drive port (even though a SATA), is smaller than the port on the hard drive. The hard drive caddy adapter allows for the hard drive to be put into this smaller SATA port for the DVD drive.
The third is updating windows with the Anniversary Update. I've heard this update has tons of issues. And because this issue happens every 1-2 weeks, I don't believe it ever crossed my mind that the update was causing it. Then 10 days passed, and by the time I thought of going back to normal windows, it was already too late (unless I want to reinstall all of Windows with my Windows 10 Installation).
I've been living with this issue for months, and it's not horrible, except that I have to keep system protection on (restore), which is writing loads of data to my SSD. I've also had this issue bother me while in class, causing me to have to fix it while in class and just take notes on paper.
System
Intel Core i5-2540m
Intel HD Graphics 3000/nVidia NVS 4200m
Samsung Evo 850 250GB SSD
Toshiba 5400RPM HDD 500GB
4 GB Crucial RAM
Windows 10 Anniversary
BIOS: A07 (newest: A23)
So I'd really appreciate any advice that anyone has.
Thanks in advance,
Snake
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