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    Brand New XPS 15 L521x Win8 Version Problems

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by freebooter, Dec 5, 2012.

  1. freebooter

    freebooter Newbie

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    Hi all,

    Yesterday I received my new L521x Windows 8 version. I noticed it comes already GPT formatted with UEFI enabled which was cool. Anyway, I booted it for the first time at the office and everything worked great. I got home, turned it on and it hung at the Dell logo, I was livid! Per a Dell tech, I changed the BIOS from IRST to AHCI and it booted into Windows fine. I then rebooted back into BIOS and changed it back to IRST to use caching. However when try to accelerate the drive in the IRST manager it gives an "unknown error has occurred." Re-installing the IRST software didn't work and the Dell tech was stumped. I told him not worry about as I was going to do fresh install of Windows 8 Pro as I have an unused license.

    Next problem is when I boot from a retail Windows 8 Pro 64-bit disk, it gets to the language selection option and when I click Next I get a "A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing," and I can't install Windows. I googled the error and everything I've read says that this usually happens when someone's ISO download is corrupt and they should re-download and re-burn the DVD. I'm using a retail DVD though.

    I've had this laptop for less than 24 hours and it's been nothing but a pain in the butt. It does make a beautiful paperweight though.
     
    freebooter, Dec 5, 2012
    #1
  2. c0derbear

    c0derbear Notebook Evangelist

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    If you're installing, do you have it set for iRST or AHCI drive mode?

    I'm just wondering if the install DVD doesn't have a suitable driver for the former mode.

    That sucks though.
     
    c0derbear, Dec 5, 2012
    #2
  3. freebooter

    freebooter Newbie

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    I have it set for IRST. As I understand it, IRST is essentially RAID mode and you have to install Windows with RAID enabled to get IRST to work. If you install it as AHCI and then enable RAID/IRST it won't boot.
     
    freebooter, Dec 5, 2012
    #3
  4. c0derbear

    c0derbear Notebook Evangelist

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    Your understanding is correct.

    I'm just wondering if for some reason the RAID mode is interfering.

    When I installed Win8 on my machine I did so to a larger mSATA SSD, so am not using that mode at all.

    I'd go so far as to say that with the boot/resume optimizations in Win8 that the IRST stuff is not needed, however I have no way of testing that assertion.
     
    c0derbear, Dec 5, 2012
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  5. goodwill

    goodwill Notebook Geek

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    goodwill, Dec 5, 2012
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  6. freebooter

    freebooter Newbie

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    Thanks, I'll continue in the other thread.
     
    freebooter, Dec 5, 2012
    #6