XPS 15 9550 bios 1.6.1 reboot, restart, warm boot - error Hard drive - Not installed

Message deleted - duplicate posting

I have the exact same problem with my one year old XPS 13 9360, BIOS version 2.5.1 dated January 2018, which is when I think the problem started.  Cold boot - no problem. Warm boot fails every time with a "hard drive not installed" error. I have run scandisk, restored laptop to factory settings and still have this problem. I am right out of ideas. Can anyone help, please?  I'm really hoping it's a driver/software problem that I can rectify as I don't want to take the back off the computer.

Thanks for any help,

Philippa

I have the exact same problem - but only intermittently. I believe that it is a BIOS issue. I go into the BIOS setup, which may or may not show the existence of a hard drive.

I dual-boot with Windows 10 and Linux Mint. The problem usually happens after I have been using Windows. In the BIOS setup I need to change the boot order - Windows seems to change it randomly.

The odd thing is that there have been times when I have got a grub boot menu, select Linux Mint, and only then get a message that there is no hard drive. That is odd, as if there was no hard drive, there would be no grub menu!

If you don't know what grub is, your problem is probably not the same as mine.

Thank you for your message. I will be glad to look into this.

Please restart the computer & tap F2 to get into BIOS Click Settings- General – Boot sequence – Choose UEFI under boot list option & check if the PCIe NVMe device is in the device list.

Please click on the message tab next your avatar– click “New Message” & search for my Dell username (Dell-Sreejith R) & send a private message with the service tag, registered name & email address.

Jan.G,

  You said that when you completely shut down your computer, the problem does not arise, but when you reboot, it does. By complete shut down do you mean holding down the physical power on button for a few seconds to force a shutdown or do you mean by clicking on the "Shutdown" link off the Start Menu or some other menus? There is a difference between the two. The shutdown links do not totally shutdown the computer, but leaves it in a semi-shutdown state (like hibernation) that allows your computer to come up quickly when you want to restart it. This is known as "Fast Startup". It does not go through the full boot up process under this method. A restart however does go through the full boot process which would then explain why you may be getting that message only on restarts although I am confused as to how you would ever get your computer to boot at all once you received that error since you would have to force a shutdown and cold restart. You might want to check the settings in your BIOS to see if the update has messed something up. Make sure the hard drive is detected. If not something might have come loose.

  I am totally discouraged by what has been happening with Dell BIOS updates (as well as some others) lately. Numerous reports of boot failures have occurred after these BIOS updates. I refuse to update my XPS 15 9550 until I can verify that these updates are working properly.

JohnD

XPS 15 9550 BIOS hasn't worked since v1.4. I've got two of these, both fail to find hard drive on a windows restart. I've gone back to a vanilla windows 10 install to test that this isn't anything to do with my OS (which it isn't).

Checking the BIOS on a restart shows in System Info that no hard drives are present (mine is a M.2 PCIe Toshiba 512Gb SSD). Exiting BIOS and restarting results in a good boot (i.e. the act of going into the BIOS and exiting seems to 'fix' it. Shutting down windows is OK (as it doesn't really do a complete shutdown) and the laptop boots fine.

I've tried V1.5.1 and 1.6.1, both have this issue. When I downgrade to 1.4 it works perfectly. I've tried resetting to Factory and BIOS defaults on 1.5.1 and 1.6.1 and it doesn't help :(

I'm using AHCI rather than RAID and haven't tried switching back to RAID.

So at the moment I'm running 1.4.0 without issue, hoping that Dell will fix this in 1.7 and that the security fixes on 1.6.1 don't bite me.

Tried an install using the Intel RST RAID drivers and BIOS 1.6.1 allows a windows restart OK. So it's an incompatibility with AHCI for BIOS 1.5.1 and 1.6.1 :(

Quality control on DELL BIOS is pretty poor. The past two BIOS updates have had serious errors and Dell had to pull them and introduce point one releases and now both the recent BIOS updates break AHCI.

Dell - can we expect the AHCI bug to be fixed in the next BIOS release?

I want to confirm the BIOS downgrade solution described by StephenHowells works. I was having the identical symptoms (had to go through BIOS to have the system see my M.2 PCIe SSD). Downgrading the BIOS from 1.61 to 1.40 solved the problem. I have not tried the Intel RST RAID drivers. Only using drivers provided by Dell at this point. 

Want to confirm this "fix" worked for me.

Dell Precision 5510

Also tried 1.7 and it's STILL not fixed. Restarting always boots into support assist.

Downgraded to 1.4 and the issue is avoided.

hi , would you explain more , step by step so that i can do the same please

Hi,

I had exactly the same problem for months. The solution was to upgrade the Toshiba SSD Firmware from the dell drivers page:

https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/xps-15-9550-laptop/drivers

regards,

Tamas