XPS 210 BIOS Update

The manual says the XPS 210 has ability to boot from USB, so I don't think updating BIOS to 2.4.0 is going to make any difference there.

From the manual:

USB Flash Device — Insert the memory device into a USB port and restart the computer.

When F12 = Boot Menu appears in the upper-right corner of the screen, press . The BIOS detects the device and adds the USB flash option to the boot menu.

NOTE: To boot to a USB device, the device must be bootable. To make sure that your device is bootable, check the device documentation.

If you decide to upgrade the CPU, you will want to update BIOS first to make sure it has support for any newer processors that Dell may have added. And you will have to purchase a new license for the 64-bit OS.

The manual says the max RAM supported is 4 GB. I don't know if any of the BIOS releases increased that amount or if this was just based on having a 32-bit CPU running a 32-bit OS. So you need to do some homework on that point. Updating to 64-bit CPU with only 4 GB RAM may not give you a lot of performance improvement.

Only you can decide how much $ to invest in this older system vs something new.

Perform the BIOS update, follow the instructions here:

• 2.4.0

See Updating the BIOS

Windows 7 64 Bit drivers are here:

http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/driver-sets/dimension-desktops/dimension-9200c-windows-7-64-bit/

If you are looking for a performance boost install a SSD and install Windows 7 64 Bit on it.

To all;

Thank you for your prompt and informative replies.

Why the XPS 210.----    I like the small footprint, it fits well in my office in my winter home

Why do I want to boot from the USB drive.----   In my main computer I have two SATA drives. I use Western Digital Acronis to clone the first disk to my internal second hard drive. This way if I ever have a problem I just boot from the second  hard drive and use that, or copy to the primary drive if necessary.

I want to do something similar in the XPS 210, which only has one drive. If I clone the internal drive to an external USB/SATA drive I cannot boot from this drive as a USB drive. I just get a blue screen. If I take that same external drive and temporarily wire it in inplace of the main SATA drive it will boot up ok. Help!

I am using the Western Digital version of Acronis. I have the full version of Acronis. Would that help?

Why do I want to upgrade the BIOS, CPU and operating system.  ---- I had hoped that the upgraded BIOS might be more flexable and help with my problem above. The CPU is cheap on EBAY. I have Wondows 7 Ultimate. I thought that the 64 bit windows and slight increase in CPU speed might be useful. This may not be worth the hassle, please let me know what you think. I use this computer mainly for email, news and EBAY.

I have run out of time and patience working on this computer, I need to get the backup problem resolved. Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

If you're saying you have a SATA hard drive in a USB housing, that may be your BSOD problem.  (Exactly what does the BSOD say?) 

You may need a USB hard drive in order to boot from the external hard drive.

The external hard drive I am using is a Rocketfish SATA hard drive enclosure. It has a 2.5 SATA hard drive in it. It has both a SATA and USB interface. When I do the Acronis "clone disk" I use the USB interface connector. When I do the restore and use the drive  USB connector to the XPS 210 USB connector I get the blue screen. I will have to re run this to give you the screen message.

 If I remove the XPS  internal drive connector from the XPS internal disk and use the SATA connector on the enclosure and wire it directly to the internal SATA  motherboard connector it will boot up with no problem.

I have an older enclosure, USB output only, with an IDE drive. Do you think this would work better?

I hope this is not too confusing. Thank you for the help.

You might try the old enclosure with the IDE drive. Make an image on that HDD and then see if you can boot from it.  BUT: keep in mind that might not work either because the image will attempt to load SATA drivers which the IDE drive can't handle and so you'd get a different BSOD.

How big is your image and can you get either a portable USB external drive or maybe a USB flash drive that's big enough to hold the image?

I have tried the older external disk enclosure (IDE drive with USB interface) Using the XPS F12 and "boot from USB".The computer will start to boot from the external disk for about 30 sec. I get the message "starting windows" on the screen. It then seems to start boot again from the XPS internal drive and boots normally.  ???

I am going to purchase a 64G USB stick drive and try that, unless you have a better idea.

Thanks again for the help.

unless you have a better idea.

Actually I might have a better -and cheaper- idea...

Acronis allows you to create a bootable CD/DVD with the software to re-image the hard drive. Suppose you boot from that Acronis CD/DVD and point the software at the image stored on your external SATA>USB drive, rather than trying to boot from the external drive, itself? 

Worth a try.

Sorry I don't understand exactly what you are saying. The Acronis software I am using was downloaded from Western Digital, it is a subset of the full Acronis. I have a full Acronis program disk but have never used it. Are you telling me to boot from the Acronis program disk, and then point it to the external USB drive? I have never used the Acronis program disk, could you give me simple instructions? If not I will try to figure it out on my own.

Thanks for the help.

I have exactly the same version of WD Acronis on my desktop. The WD version only allows you to create full images of the entire hard drive, which is probably all you really need, though it does take longer and use more disk space.

Run WD Acronis that's on the system now and look for option to create bootable (recovery) media. It's there somewhere. Not on that PC now so can't give you exact location. When you find it, follow the prompts to create the CD/DVD. That's how I did it.

Save your image backups on the external SATA>USB drive.

If you ever have to restore an image, you boot from the CD/DVD you created and when it asks to select the image, browse to the external drive and select which image you want to use. You may only have one image if you overwrite the old one with a new one. But I always save at least 2 successive images, because I'm paranoid...

And being paranoid, I tested the bootable CD and a fresh hard drive image to make sure it works before I ever really need it.

Sorry I am still having problems. I created the Acronis disk like you specified. I plug in my USB image that I have created. I then use F12 to boot from the Acronis disk. I get three options

1. Acronis True Image

2. System Report

3. Windows

I have tried all three, none of them allow me to boot from the external USB drive. What am I doing wrong?

I also purchased a 64  G thumb drive. I backed up the system to it. When I try to use F12 to boot from all I get is a blue screen with an EN in the lower right corner. Help

Thanks, Jim G.

You do not want to boot from the external hard drive. :emotion-5:

You want to launch Acronis from the CD you made and follow the prompts to reimage the hard drive using an image file that's stored on the external drive. The external drive will be your data drive, not a boot drive.

And if you test this, make certain you're using the latest hard drive image or any files created or changed after that image was created will be lost forever.

You have to make a USB drive bootable before you put your image on it. There are lots of tutorials on the net on to create a bootable USB stick.  Alternatively, just boot from the CD you made and point Acronis at the USB stick instead of at the external hard drive.

I'm trying to make this simple for you so you only ever have to boot from the Acronis CD you made, and never from whatever external drive has the image on it.

If I understand your note your technique will load the external drive or USB stick into my internal drive thus overwriting it. My goal was to be able to boot from the external drive or stick without destroying the internal drive. This way I could checkout the backup before I overwrote the internal drive. Thanks for the help..

That is correct.

But even if you boot from the external drive or USB stick with an Acronis image on it, it's not going to use that image to boot the PC. The image is a .tib file which cannot be used to load Windows.

When you boot from the external drive (or from the CD/DVD you created) it's only going to load system files from that drive which give you access to the Acronis recovery module which can open and restore the image.

When you create an image of the HDD be sure to select the option to VALIDATE the image.  If I remember correctly, you have to click the link to set the options for image creation manually to find the Validate checkbox. That adds a bit of extra time to creating the image, but it tests to make sure it's not corrupted, and prompts if there's an error.

And, once you create an image on external drive, you can load Acronis from the internal drive and select the option to browse an image. You can open the .tib file and see the contents in real time. You can even restore a single file back to the hard drive. Makes it easier to recover if you accidentally delete a file from the hard drive and don't need to restore everything.

Thank you for explaining how the Acronis backup works. I find the information very useful in helping me backup my drive.

Thanks again, Jim Gereg