New Dell Bios rendered XPS 8900 desktop unusable

Any luck finding your Windows installation experts ?

Patience, my friend. It's a holiday week and people may be away and busy with other things. I told them to post directly in this thread so just keep watching here...

Did you disconnect all devices, except mouse, monitor and keyboard? Are you installing the same version (Home or Pro) of Win 7 that you had?  Your system is tied to the version you had...

You might try creating a bootable USB with the Win 7 file directly from Microsoft and try that version, which is probably more up-to-date than the one you got from Dell's site. But you need your Microsoft Product key from the sticker on the tower to start the download from Microsoft.

www.microsoft.com/.../windows7

Stuck at the "Starting Windows" screen. This usually occurs when hardware is faulty... Since you tried a Reinstallation. Are you currently stuck on the first Starting Windows Screen (when you boot from the installation media and then select your language options etc) or the one after it restarts?

NOT stuck on the first starting windows screen , i get through the "choose your language screen" and get to the "Upgrade or Custom" screen and it goes on to the next with the "Checkmarks" and then restarts itself .

It restarts itself (After the prompt to hit a key to boot from the USB drive" again which i leave alone of course since it's in the process of installing .

It very quickly moves past the "Updating Registry Settings" and when the screen pop's up again showing more "Checkmarks" it freezes at the point it says "Completing Installation" and won't budge any further than that .

Yes, thank you very very much for sharing your expertise.

You might try creating a bootable USB with the Win 7 file directly from Microsoft and try that version, which is probably more up-to-date than the one you got from Dell's site. But you need your Microsoft Product key from the sticker on the tower to start the download from Microsoft. www.microsoft.com/.../windows7

Dell's Windows 7 Reinstallation .isos are updated to January 2016 and include addition driver support such as USB 3.0 and storage controllers for up to Skylake systems. They also apply Dell OEM SLP.

http://www.dell.com/support/home/uk/en/ukdhs1/drivers/osiso/recoverytool/ 

Microsoft's on the other hand are seriously outdated December 2010 moreover require a Windows 7 key which one may not have if they are invoking downgrade rights and in any case it rejects Dell OEM keys.

Stuck at the "Starting Windows" screen. This usually occurs when hardware is faulty... Since you tried a Reinstallation. Are you currently stuck on the first Starting Windows Screen (when you boot from the installation media and then select your language options etc) or the one after it restarts?

This can be a memory module but Dell F12 preboot diagnostics should pick this up.

Sometimes it occurs if there are USB storage devices such as external hard drives plugged in or a card in the card reader so as Ron mentioned remove anything apart from the keyboard, mouse and bootable installation media.

Since this occured after a UEFI BIOS update also have a look at your UEFI BIOS settings. Its most likely that the UEFI BIOS update has changed a setting and this is preventing the start up.

UEFI BIOS settings:

• The Boot Mode should be set to UEFI.
• Secure Boot should be Off.
• Legacy ROMs settings (not shown on the Boot Manager Screen) should be Enabled.

The installation media should be set to the GPT partition screen.

Check that your SATA Operation is AHCI. If you have a small 32 GB M.2 SSD cache drive then it may also be useful to remove this to check if this influences the Boot.

Check also what the settings are particularly for your Ethernet controller, Wireless Card and other hardware. It may also be worthwhile going through and disabling hardware in the UEFI BIOS setup one by one and seeing if you can pass the boot screen. I can't give you the screenshots of this as I don't have an XPS 8900.

Booting with BIOS setting on UEFI says "No boot device found" .

This machine runs Win 7 pro and i believe was always set on Legacy not UEFI , AHCI is enabled as is support for Legacy rom.

I was able to download Win 10 from a Dell disk that came with the computer since i forgot i had one . While i can install 10 i still can't get past the " Thats all the information we need right now , your computer will restart several times during installation" screen while installing Win 7 .

It stays on that screen for hours and hours and nothing happens.

Hello All,

I have the same problem with the strongly recommended Bios Update and tried several thinks for a fix without success. My observation so far was:

- with the new BIOS (2.2.1) there was the Intel-Management-Engine-Components-Installer_4J8MX_WIN_11.7.0.1035_A00_06.exe download. That showed a download error. Thus I started only the BIOS-Update.

- During BIOS Update I got the impression that Intel drivers have also been updated!

- On start-up Windows shows a Memory Management problem and the DELL diagnostic can't find a hardware problem.

- I can load a RAM based OS but the hard disc with the Windows 10 installation can’t be accessed.

- I tried also to install new Windows 10 from USB, but this stopped also with the memory management message from Windows.

To me it looks like with the BIOS update there was also a chip-set driver update with cause the memory management problem and makes the hard disc not accessible (even if the DELL hardware diagnostic is reporting no problem with the HD-drive).

Thus my questions is how can a restore the old drivers around the HD-drive access and does the DELL-Software team knows this dangerous problem they created here?

I pinged my Dell tech contact...

FWIW, this new version of BIOS also flash updates the ME firmware (It's not a chipset software update) to fix a security hole created by Intel.

So it's probably too risky to force revert to a previous version of BIOS because the ME update may not be compatible with prior versions of BIOS, and that could brick the motherboard completely, unless L3 says it's ok to force revert...

L3 engineering has been notified and will investigate the problem.

I tried to restore the old Bios but nothing changed. Will send the PC back to Dell today and see how they can fix it and how long it will take to get my computer back again. I have to stop working and take vacation during this time. The software support here said I will have to pay them to go through the steps of reconnecting the SSD+HD with them! So Dell software support ask me to pay for a problem which was generated by Dell. This is an interesting service philosophy. I am afraid nobody will believe me this horrible story from an owner of a Dell computer. If they believe, they will stop trusting Dell SW-quality advice to Update driver and Bios. Hopefully other Dell PC owner are getting aware of the problem before they start an Bios update. In the car industry they would give out a warning and stop distribution of updates..

So looking here...

Fixes:
- Update to the latest CPU Microcode.
- Updated Intel ME Firmware to address security advisories INTEL-SA-00086 (CVE-2017-5705, CVE-2017-5708, CVE-2017-5711 & CVE-2017-5712) & INTEL-SA-00101(CVE-2017-13077, CVE-2017-13078 & CVE-2017-13080).
- Updated the handling of pre-boot authentication information by firmware.
- Updated UEFI variable input validation.
- Updated the handling of 3rd party Option ROM loading.
- Updated SPI flash command configuration settings.

I was able to download Win 10 from a Dell disk that came with the computer since i forgot i had one . While i can install 10 i still can't get past the " Thats all the information we need right now , your computer will restart several times during installation" screen while installing Win 7 . It stays on that screen for hours and hours and nothing happens.

Did you install Windows 10 with Secure Boot Enabled and Legacy ROMs disabled? Also was in Version 1709? I suspect the UEFI BIOS update may have fixed something with the UEFI Boot and simultaneously broke the Legacy Boot options...

You have to use windows 10 PE and Diskpart to select the Drive and Clean the drive.  Then shut down and boot NON SECURE BOOT CSM to install Windows 7 and It has to be the Special SKYLAKE version.

The older version WILL NOT INSTALL on the newer systems.