Event ID 9 & 51

Have a problem that seems to be occuring on all 3 new Dell desktop computers. Don't think it's a hardware problem, since there are 3 machines with identical problems. It isn't a virus, because the machines came directly from Dell and have never been exposed to the internet.

The computers "freeze" periodically. Can "restart" by bringing up Taskmgr and then cancelling it. Have to do this with C-A-D. When this happens, clicking on start doesn't work. Have lots of Event ID 9 and Event ID 51s in the event log at the problem times. The problem started about 4 days after the computers went on line. They are in a closed POS application. There is no internet access. I've removed (I think) all internet operations, disabled the security center, disabled the firewall, etc. I've also removed EVERYTHING from system startup (registry->microsoft->windows->....->run. This was done on Day 1, so I have doublts that this is the problem, but I can't be sure.

If all else fails, will contact Dell support, but have been disappointed with them in the past. Checked the MS knowledge base and got a lot of info about the errors, which seem to relate to SCSI devices more than IDE.

 

Would help to know what version of windows and what the hardware of the machine is. If you think it is scsi then it sounds like a driver issue with the scsi card.

 

Windows XP, which is why I posted in the XP group. It is SP2. It's a dell desktop 2400 series. It isn't SCSI, which I guess that I didn't make clear. There was very little help from the MS KB because the articles focused on scsi problems rather than IDE.

 

With XP, it is always good to know the version (home or pro) as well as the SP level.

POS systems often have additional hardware added along with the POS software. What, exactly, have you added?

Open the event viewer, double-click open at least one ID 9, one ID 51, and if you have any ID 11, one of them. With the event open, click on the arrow below the up/down arrows to send a text copy to the clipboard. Since the machines have no internet, copy the contents to a text file (notepad will be fine).

When you have one of each, get the notepad document to another PC and post the exact events.

Take a look at the binary data with the errors and if it is different from one ID 9 to another or one ID 51 to another, post a couple of each error.

 

error 9s and 51s together are a bad sign that something is wrong with the hardware. Those errors basically mean the OS gave the data to the controller, and it went to the bitbucket in the sky. Since you are getting them across several machines (making assumption you havent added any ide devices) then something isnt right with how these boxes were setup. Maybe bad batch of cabling, wrong cabling, wrong jumper settings, something like that.

You probably need to pop the top and take a close look at the disk subsystem connections and settings. That failing, a call to the OEM is probably in order.

 

I've never been a Dell fan, and now I'm even less of one. I ran ChkDsk on these machines and found a bunch of file problems. Now, these are new machines. Ran chkdsk /R and two of the 3 boxes stopped having the problems, and the machine lockups stopped. Did not solve the problem with box #3, however, which registers the events once per hour.

Dell comes with some diagnostics, which I did run. I obtained a failure code on one of the disks, but Dell says that the code isn't in their list of failure codes. After running chkdsk, that machine no longer produces the failure. When the machines were installed, there were no problems. The problems began after 8 days of operation. Will track these boxes and see if there are problems again after a week or so. There shouldn't be anything that I can do to ***** up the file system, and I've never seen problems like these. Am not happy with Dell.