Help installing SanDisk Extreme in XPS L702x

Hello all

I got a new Sandisk Extreme 120gb ssd, I decided to do a clean win7 pro 64bit installation, it took more than an hour to install win7 and when windows finally booted up, my laptop was freezing up randomly and when installing drivers and had to reboot the laptop, sometime it won't reboot. I decided to install back the two 500gb hd and now windows does not want to boot up, a line stay blinking on the upper rigth side of the screen. Now I put back the ssd and just keep getting error message that there were I/O problem with my ssd. I have the A14 bios version. Can someone help me out with this? Thanks

 

Any idea someone? I'm formatting and installing windows 7 again on my ssd, and now I'm having problems with this installation. I'm so frustrated, ii is a $1200 laptop, first was the nvidia drivers and all the problems with bios a14 and now this.

 

That's really weird... If your warranty is still on I would strongly suggest your to call Dell and ask for a change. Good luck!

 

do you think they're gonna give me hard time because I did a windows clean installation? or void my warranty?

 

Don't worry it's absolutely your right to do a clean install and it doesn't void your warranty for sure.

If you want to be precocious you can always say that you didn't even start the computer when you receive it but did a clean install right away (which is your right).

 

I doubt dell will do anything since the problem seems with the ssd. OP Have you simply tried reinstalling windows on the ssd with JUST that drive in the machine, make sure to take the 500gb drive out before you do this and see if it works if not tell me the problems exactly how they are. Dont try to install any drivers, just do this and then see. It could be the firmware on the ssd needs updating which can cause freezes etc.

 

What Sam said. Make sure neither of the original drives are in the machine when you try to install the the SSD. Since boot files are placed on the old drives from the initial factory install, it can cause all kinds of issues to have them in when doing the new install.

Dell won't help out with issues on a drive you bought and installed. But on their supplied drives, they cannot deny you service for re-installing the same OS that came with the system. Despite what they might try to tell you. Been there with them on that before...(when I said I reformatted immediately, they couldn't understand why. According to them they install ZERO bloatware, apparently having 95 processes running on an out-of-the-box machine is normal... )

 

Well, I just put back both 500gb hd and since I have a server running Windows Home server, before I formatted the hd the first day, I created a backup image. My dell xps can't find the server ( i think is lan card drivers) so i put one of the 500 hd in my hp and re-image with the image I created the first the when I got the new dell laptop. I put the 500gb hd back to the dell and now I'm running windows home premium with all the bloatware that came with the dell laptop. I think I'm going to shrink the 500gb hd create an image and the put that image on the sandisk sdd.

I'm not very confident that is going to fix the problem, with the ssd it took 5 minutes to boot up windows 7 pro, way too slow. It could be a bad sdd.

Thanks for the response guy, appreciate it.

 

I've been searching around for a new firmware but it seems there is not such of thing.

 

I just tried to shrink the C drive to something close to 115gb but Windows won't let me shrink it to less than 245gb, if a create an image of the size it won't fit on the sandisk 120gb ssd

 

ok guys I just tried install windows 7 pro, no other drives were plugged in except for the sdd, after windows 7 finished installing everything and do the first reboot i got this error message

windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. to fix the problem:

1.inset your windows installation disc and restart your computer
2. choose your language settings and the click "next".
3. click "repair your computer."

file: \Windows\system32\drivers\ql2300.sys
status : 0xc00000e9

info: Windows failed to load because a critical system driver is missing or corrupt

 

Have you tried a clean install through the windows disc? Ie formatting it? Or have you tried what it suggests, putting the disc in and restart?

 

I tried both.

 

Have you switched the HDD controller to AHCI mode for the SSD? If so, the old HDD OS which was likely installed in IDE mode will not boot properly. Conversely, the SSD will only work at proper speeds in AHCI mode.

 

Actually the old HDD were installed in AHCI, I tried both modes and does not make any difference, I even forgot to change it back to AHCI and when installed back the two 500gb hdd's, I was getting BOSD.

Is there any way it could be a bad hard drive?