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Inspiron 530S - "AHCI BIOS not installed" - error came out of nowhere.
My Inspiron 530S is about 8-9 months old. In November 2008, I installed a second harddrive as I work from home and my business requires that I use Windows XP. So, I have the factory harddrive as my secondary and it has Vista on it, and I have my new HD as the primary with Windows XP on it. It has been working like a dream until Monday morning.
My computer froze up while I was working, and I was forced to restart. When it tried to restart it just sat at the black screen with "Dell" on it for what seemed like a good 20-30 minutes with nothing happening. I tried numerous times to re-boot, and kept getting the same issue. Finally, I just let it sit, and then it started to boot, VERY VERY SLOWLY. The Win XP load screen slowly faded into view and then it booted semi-normally. Well, after some digging, I got some ideas of what was wrong (Issues with SATA, RAID, drivers... and a lot of Greek). I tried a few fixes suggested on other forums, but could not get it to work. Someone suggested removing the battery from the motherboard and then replacing it, and that helped boost my speed on start-up a small amount, but now, everytime it boots it goes into CHKDSC and only wants to check my Vista harddrive (Which is odd, b/c it says that it is the Win XP chkdsk but it's checking my Vista HD...) and then it boots up again. Otherwise, it seems to be functioning normally, but this is concerning for me. I don't want to run into future problems
So - can anyone help? I'm trying to fix this without incuring a few hundred dollars in service charges at a repair shop.
MBBarnesAL
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March 1st, 2012 18:00
Double check one thing brefore you go into all that. I found this worked for me only through accident.
Turns out the warning you see is is on many Dell factory config machines however the timing is such that it hits the screen so briefly, many never see it as the bios and then the OS moves on to post. MY issue was that the post of the BIOS was stalled out(leaving that message - unrelated) due to an issue with my external powered BELKIN USB hub. Since the BIOS can actually load from USB devices It never crossed my mind there might be an HCL violation with this relatively new device. Somehow it hung for upwards to 30 minutes with that hub plugged in and powered on bootup.
After I removed the hub altogether and went back to using all the onboard usb ports, I NEVER had another instance of this issue.
Good luck, I hope my WEEKS of pain and serendipity helps you.
M
MBBarnesAL
4 Posts
1
March 1st, 2012 18:00
Double check one thing brefore you go into all that. I found this worked for me only through accident.
Turns out the warning you see is is on many Dell factory config machines however the timing is such that it hits the screen so briefly, many never see it as the bios and then the OS moves on to post. MY issue was that the post of the BIOS was stalled out(leaving that message - unrelated) due to an issue with my external powered BELKIN USB hub. Since the BIOS can actually load from USB devices It never crossed my mind there might be an HCL violation with this relatively new device. Somehow it hung for upwards to 30 minutes with that hub plugged in and powered on bootup.
After I removed the hub altogether and went back to using all the onboard usb ports, I NEVER had another instance of this issue.
Good luck, I hope my WEEKS of pain and serendipity helps you.
M