System Freezes - "iastor error"

[TaTu]

Facing a serious problem with Dell XPS 410 that is running with Windows Vista Home. No matter what I do on this PC, whether am playing games, browsing, working with photoshop, or even while typing THIS QUERY my system gets hanged for about 1 minute to 3 minutes. It gets completely unusable suddenly. And this happens every 5 to 7 minutes.

I this period I cannot do anything because even my mouse stops moving and keyboard keys stops working, Only I can see on my screen is this error:

“The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period.”

I contacted Dell regarding this various times, and they responded as well but they are just unable to fix it permanently. They suggested me many fixes such as making some changes in registry, disabling various services, even update my Intel Matrix Storage manager but none of them helped. Last time when I got frustrated with the system and called them, they transferred my call to Paid Services. Infact, the now transfer me every time to paid call service. Why should I pay them for this. They have sent me a faulty computer.

Anyway, do anyone of you guys have some suggestion to fix this problem ? Please help.

[Epstein]

Well I don’t have any experience with such weird problem so far on my Vista but as wanted to help you, tried searching iaStor0 on Google and found it related to many Windows like Win2000, Xp and Vista. Anyways, the results I found they suggests trying 'Intel Matrix Storage Manager - Possible Issues With Windows Vista and Intel RAID'. You can get this here http://www.intel.com/support/chipset.../cs-025783.htm. try out the solution mentioned here and see if it works for you.

[attitude.ashwin]

If you believe, the problem is VERY well known with Dell desktops or laptops. I have seen many people facing this freezing problem with Dell + Vista and the best solution for the same is to disable the RAID from BIOS and re-install Vista again. Just restart the system, keep tapping F2 to enter Setup, disable the RAID function of your motherboard. Now disconnect every other hdds and reinstall Windows Vista. It will work.,

[TaTu]

Thanks a lot for your solutions buddy. I will try out this later tonight as I have posted my query on many other forums and waiting for their suggestions. Thanks BTW.