XPS 8940, boot issue, trouble installing windows

Question

I have a 3070 dell XPS 8940 prebuilt pc and have since a couple of days ago been having trouble booting it up, it would be stuck in a boot loop and whenever it went into automatic repair mode, after a few seconds the screen would turn black, I didn't know what the problem was as dell diagnostics didn't detect any issues.

So I decided that I would just do a fresh install of windows, so I made a bootable usb but when I plugged it in, it would be loading for a few seconds but then would show a blank blue screen. Interestingly enough when I disconnected my hard drive, while it still won't boot, it comes up differently, whenever I try to boot off my usb it doesnt even get past the windows loading screen and keeps loading and when I try to "automatic repair" it doesn't go into a black screen like it usually does but keeps looping as well.

Lastly, might be irrelevant but when i changed the sata operations in bios from raid to disabled it would allow the windows setup to popup but make it unable to detect a drive.

Thanks, any help will be much appreciated.

JOcean · Answer

Even though no problems were detected in diagnostics, it sure has the symptoms of a failed HDD. Did diagnostics report no hard drive found? And SATA should be set to AHCI.

Vic384 · Answer

@Dom_ Are you sure the USB you created is bootable? Can you try the bootable USB on another computer? Did you use Microsoft's Media Creation Tool? Did you insert the USB into the USB port before trying to boot the computer? Have you tried booting the USB from the F12 Boot Menu? With regards to the SATA operation setting in the BIOS, Dell normally sets this to RAID at the factory.

Dom_ · Answer

Ive already disconnected the hdd and all that is left is my ssd, is it reasonable to assume that its my ssd's fault, yes diagnostics didnt detect a hard drive and ahci is already selected

Dom_ · Answer

yes it works on my laptop and used media creation tool, yes it was inside the port before i booted it every time, and yes i booted it from the f12 menu and even rearranged it in bios so itd boot off the usb first

Vic384 · Answer

@Dom_ It seems that you are doing everything correctly; the only other thing I can think of to try is to use Dell's OS Recovery Tool: https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/osiso/recoverytool/wt64a

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XPS 8940, boot issue, trouble installing windows

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