Not quite the scenario you are seeing but almost certainly refers to the driver you are looking for. The video that may help is here.

Thanks for the tip. I will check it out. The link on the video description to Intel's site is a 404 (https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/27681/Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-Intel-RST-User-Interface-and-Driver?product=55005) but I'm sure I can find the new location.

I've been reading more about this and it seems clear that I'm not up to speed on how this system hardware if configured. Several others have mentioned I should switch my bios storage settings out of raid mode and then I'd be fine. I'm not sure why it's in raid mode but I do see that it is. I'm not at all familiar with this or the other mode motioned (I'm a software developer I don't know jack about this though). I am not sure what the implications or impacts would be of changing that mode.

Although as long as it won't completely break the system beyond repair I don't mind trying. The worst that could happen is I need a fresh install and that's not a problem to me at all.

I called dell (the system is only 60 days old) asking for guidance but they made it clear that they don't want me to be able to clean install windows fresh myself, won't help me try, and their recovery image is all they will support. Ugh.

I just want "just" windows. No support assist, no Dell anything. I am really surprised it's not easy to do but I think it's mostly that raid configuration and Intel rapid storage driver that's tripping me up

I thought I might as well try Dell's official solution for re-imagine this machine, so I used their recovery image download tool and used it -- and the system is nothing but problems. Windows installed, but also certain pages in Settings wouldn't open, it updated to include the new Edge but clicking it prompted an error that explorer.exe couldn't be found, just dumb issues.

I really didn't think getting a clean install would be this hard on this machine.

Is it going to destroy anything if I change the RAID option in BIOS/Storage to ACHI instead and try installing from Microsoft's USB media?

Well switching the BIOS storage option to "ACHI" instead of "RAID" made Windows Setup be able to see the drive. I removed all 8 or so partitions from it and then hit "next" to let Windows set them up, and all seems fine. I may be taking a performance hit or maybe this disabled my optane optimization, I'm not sure. I truly don't know the implications but so far it seems perfect and I'm fairly content to leave well-enough alone unless someone chimes in that I've done something stupid (in which case, please tell me).

@CmdrKeene​ Switching from RAID to ACHI worked. Thank you.

@CmdrKeene​ this helped! thanks!