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XPS All-in-one 27 (non-touchscreen) won't reboot after Win 8 installs some hot-fixes.
I have a XPS all-in-one 27, which came with Win 7 64bit when I bought it in August. I upgraded to Win 8 64 bit recently and am having loads of trouble. The upgrade itself worked fine - I could use the PC for a few days. I had neglected to turn off automatic updates... when it downloaded some hotfixes and installed them, it wouldn't reboot. Blue screen. Tried system restore, refresh, etc. but no luck. Called Microsoft Support, who recommended a clean install (i.e. the Custom option from a USB iso image). Did that. Back in action. Turned off auto updates. Checked for updates. 23 updates pending. From the descriptions available, all seem useful and/or security fixes. Installed them all. Blue screen, unable to restore, unable to refresh. Called Microsoft again. They think its an incompatibility with NVidia's drivers and have had several reports of issues with Dell + NVidia + Win8 upgrades.
1) I have now reinstalled Win 8 yet again and disabled auto updates. Has anyone else seen the same issue?
2) Any idea what version of the NVidia driver I need for the Geforce GT 640M that came with the desktop? (Note: It's a 640M, i.e. a mobile card but in a desktop?!).
Win8 upgrade installed 9.18.13.721.
According to Nvidia.com, the latest version of the driver is the 310.90 release.
Dell's driver download page recommends Dell NV Discrete N13P-GS GFX Driver 9.18.13.697, A01
The NVidia control panel's "Check for driver update" thinks I don't need any updates.
Thank
osprey4
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January 14th, 2013 04:00
Hi Gislkard69,
I've had the best results using the NVidia driver. My suggestion with the updates is to install them one at a time, then you'll know which one to avoid.
Since your question pertains to the operating system, I'm going to more your message to the Microsoft OS forum for more help.
Giskard69
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January 14th, 2013 18:00
Giskard69
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January 18th, 2013 17:00
Is anyone from Dell listening? It's now 18 days of pain. I have spent many nights on the phone with Microsoft and Dell tech support; reinstalled Win8 more than 7 times; formatted and done a clean install. No joy. I want my money back...
Giskard69
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January 26th, 2013 10:00
Dell tech support was finally able to get me up and running. Given the number of things we tried over 3 weeks, I am not sure what the right sequence is, but the culprit seems to be an incompatibility between Windows 8, the BIOS settings used to enable RAID across the internal SATA and SSD disks, the version of the BIOS and the version of the Intel Rapid Boost technology that uses this RAID arrangement to speed up load times for device drivers and the like. Dell wound up doing a "super clean" install of everything -- it got to the point where the machine didn't have device drivers to read the Win 8 DVD and we had to rebuild everything from that point onwards.
It seems to have taken both Microsoft and Dell tech support ages to sort this out because:
1) The one clue -- which existed all along but flashed on the screen for a millisecond and was unreported in all the log files and event manager -- was a sideways smiley face that said something like "your pc didn't restart, Microsoft will collect some info and restart". At the bottom of this message was a hexadecimal code and what I realized after 30+ viewings said "INACCESIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE".
2) Win8 upgrade advisor didn't spot this incompatibility between RAID / SSD / Intel / BIOS.
3) Dell doesn't make note of this on their website, just says that XPS 2710 is certified for Win 8.
4) When we checked via the service tag, Dell's drivers and downloads page claimed that the BIOS on my machine was compatible with Windows 8 -- it wasn't. Checking the same page for "all downloads relevant to my product" -- i.e. not just for my service tag -- showed that version A09 is recommended for Win8.
5) After we installed A09 and reinstalled Win8, we had the same problem as before and had to change several BIOS settings -- apparently the RAID setup for Win8 needs different BIOS settings than the same setup for Win7. These settings aren't documented anywhere on Dell or Microsoft's website or identified by any of their upgrade advisors or "read me before you upgrade" documentation.
Hope this information helps other 2710 owners who might hit the same problem during Win8 upgrades... and hope Dell updates their website to show the right sequence that would make an upgrade work the first time around.