This post is more than 5 years old
21 Posts
1
71765
XPS 420 won't boot to new SSD
I have an XPS 420 with BIOS A07. I purchased a Samsung 500G 850 EVO SSD. I used the software included to duplicate my existing HD. That worked without problem. I then installed the SSD, went into the BIOS. I found the place where I needed to set SATA2, the port where it is plugged into the motherboard, to On. After rebooting, I went into the BIOS and when I select SATA2, it now provides information about the SSD. I also see it in Windows Explorer. However, I don't see an option to make it the boot drive. In the BIOS, there is a section about Boot order, but it just lists SATA drive. It doesn't specify which one.
Also, in the section on SATA there is no option for AHCI. Just SATA/ATA or RAID. I found instructions on the Web for enabling AHCI in the registry for this computer. I followed the steps and was successful in changing the two settings as instructed. Checking back shows them as changed. But AHCI still does not show up as an option in the BIOS. How can I make my new SSD the boot drive?
Thanks for the help.
Robb
oaklandrobb
21 Posts
2
September 13th, 2015 16:00
Looks like I may have found a solution, although I am surprised that it worked, and maybe something else is making it work. I had assumed that the SATA port number on the motherboard didn't matter. But just in case SATA0 was faster, and possibly to solve the problem, I moved my SSD to SATA0, my old hard drive to SATA1, and the DVD drive to SATA2. I went back into the bios to enable SATA0, which I had disabled earlier since the old hard drive was plugged in there and it always booted to it. I saved and let it boot and sure enough it booted to the SSD. I then rebooted, and went into the BIOS, and made sure that it saw each drive on the correct SATA port and that each was enabled. Everything looked as expected and it then continued to boot to the SSD. The old drive shows up in Windows Explorer as E. The DVD drive works, as well.
I guess most people don't have to do this since they can set the boot sequence for the SATA drives through the BIOS. But since I couldn't, it seems this method worked and it is going in the order of the SATA ports. And it is likely just as well to be using SATA0 for my SSD just in case it is faster. My guess is that all SATA ports are the same, and slow in this older Dell. But it works and I'm happy.
I am surprised there were no responses to my questions or issues. I guess my Dell is too old. Nonetheless, I thought I would get something from the community. Until about five years ago Dell had a different provider for their forums with a lot of participation. I think the provider was named Lithium. It seemed that when they changed providers people were disappointed and the old timers left. Anyway, hopefully my experience will be useful to someone. I can't be the only one running one of these computers. And now with this SSD running, I will continue to do so for awhile longer.
Robb
oaklandrobb
21 Posts
1
September 8th, 2015 21:00
I got it to boot to my SSD by going into the BIOS and in the list of drives, turning the old hard drive off. That means that I can't use it for additional storage. But doing that verifies that the new SSD was cloned correctly and is booting. So here are my questions now:
1. Is there a way to have both drives be active?
2. Currently I have the SSD in SATA2. On the XPS 420 is there a difference in the speed of the various SATA ports? If I can't have both, then I can easily move it to SATA0. The DVD is in SATA1, so I could switch that to SATA2 and put the SSD in SATA1. Will it make any difference?
By the way, I did try the RAID option in the BIOS setup. Choosing that did make both drives show up in the SATA boot priority list, but it wouldn't boot to either drive since it said they weren't RAID drives. So I had to go back to the first option in the BIOS.
Robb
harbury
213 Posts
0
September 14th, 2015 02:00
Actually your forum entries are very interesting because I had previously bought exactly the same SSD and had reluctantly given up on trying to make it work having tried the things you did up to the point of swapping round SATA ports - this seems to be the answer. I believe I also came across a number of forum entries (but I haven't gone back to find them again) that said the 420 BIOS (A07) did not support SSDs, which I was a bit surprised at since it isn't really that old a machine and there must still be a lot of them out there. I also came across an entry in a forum (possibly not a Dell one, but I can't be sure) that advertised a hacked BIOS that purported to provide the support. It was at that stage that I gave up and reluctantly used the SSD elsewhere.
Anyway let me say thank you and congratulations for pursuing this matter and for coming up with and publishing the solution. It looks like I'll be buying a second one of these SSDs and giving it another go. Before I do that can I ask one further question - has the SSD really made any difference to the performance of your machine. It seems to have made no real difference to the oldish laptop that I did eventually make use of it in and I was disappointed by that. What is your Windows Experience score now? Mine with WIN 7 64 bit is 5.9 with the hard disk being the limiting factor.