Dell XPS 8100 hangs for ~ 10 min on windows loading screen - does boot

I'm fixing my dad's XPS 8100.  He said it started hanging "indefinately" on the windows loading screen weather or not he was booting into the recovery console or normal windows.  Here are the things I've done since then:

1.  Ran the HD diagnostic tool and the 1 TB Seagate drive that was in there turned up as bad

2.  Bought a Samsung 840 SSD and installed it into SATA port 0

3.  Installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Ultimate

4.  Upon the first reboot the computer now hangs at the windows loading screen (with the animation playing) for at least 10 minutes every time the computer is rebooted.

5.  Checked BIOS settings to make sure the drive was set in RAID mode (No AHCI setting, but RAID mode is supposed to turn it on)

6.  Unplugged Card readers

7.  Tested voltage of BIOS battery and it tested good.

7.  Ran a full memory test - no errors.  Also booted with one stick of ram - same 10 + minute boot.

8.  Deleted and formatted all partitions and reinstalled Windows 7 Ultimate.

NO CHANGE!

What's perplexing about this problem is there are no memory errors.  The computer worked fine for 3 years until either the HD died and or this hanging on the windows starting screen started happening.  Again, he was never able to boot into windows once it started happening, but I can - but only after 10 minutes.

Only thing I have not done yet is updated the BIOS to S8100-A05.  I didn't read anything in the BIOS change log that said it had anything to do with booting.