New XPS 9550 issues

I just purchased a XPS 9550 with an i7 and the NVMe 512 GB drive.

My first issue is that the Wipe Drive option in BIOS under Maintenance does nothing, I’ve tried to erase the drive using this option a few times and after getting a message that the drive is erased it reboots and the it's back into Windows?

The second issue is during the Windows 10 installation I have to plug in an external keyboard to get into diskpart, hitting shift+F10 (or any other keys) on the built in keyboard during a clean install does nothing?

 

The bios option to erase the drive doesn't work with NVME drives, only sata

I have no issues with shift + F10 to bring up command prompt on windows install. You likely have the FN keys setup in bios to do their assigned multimedia function. You'd have to hit shift + fn + f10

 

Thanks for the response, I tried doing a secure erase using PartedMagic also, doesn’t work. So I guess those of us with the NVME drive are SOL when it comes to doing a secure erase before a clean Windows install?

I thought I tried the fn keys also but I'll give it another go.

 

A format tends to do the same job if you are not worried about data fragments being recovered, I guess NVMe support will follow on parted magic.

 

I use the clean command in diskpart and then convert to gpt before reformatting but from what I’ve read it’s not the same as a secure erase. Secure erase will reset the storage cells as empty and restore the drive to factory default settings and write performance, the clean command in diskpart will not.

 

Yeah I understand that but trim/garbage collection will sort the performance within 24 hours by rights.

 

I didn’t know that, would that be the same as using the optimizing option in Windows defrag?

Off that subject, have you ever used NTLite to create a custom OS install USB for the XPS 9550?

 

yes the optimize is a forced trim but it stil needs to sit idle to restore performance so don't reboot and benchmark straight after.

and I use NTlite to create the ISO's in my sig

(Rufus to create the USB sticks)

 

I purchased a home license for NTLite the other day so that I could make a custom Windows 10 ISO for the XPX 9550 but I haven’t had any success with getting the chipset drivers integrated into the image.

The last time I used NTLite was years ago with Windows XP x64 without any issues.

BTW do you know if the Windows 10 image that’s on Dell’s support site (when you enter your service tag) is a clean image without the McAfee garbage already installed?

 

Dunno I never used it. To be fair windows does a good job pulling in most drivers that don't come with inf files.

 

This thing is pretty bizarre as far as the instability is concerned. The first time I clean installed Windows 10 on it everything locked up (no mouse or keyboard input) during the driver install process right after getting through the reformat. The second time I made it all the way through the driver installs and Windows update and then the machine just crashed on a Defender virus scan?

This last try I reformatted, installed just the wireless driver, connected to Windows update (which installed everything but the Intel AHCI Controller driver) and haven’t had any issues at all, go figure? The only issue with doing it this way is the out dated Nvidia drivers for the 960M. I guess I could uninstall the out dated ones and reinstall the 364.51’s but I’m not gaming on this machine anyway.

I’ve got three high end gaming desktops two of which are using Z97 based motherboards and the third using the Z87 chipset. I’m using a Titan X, 980 GTX and a AMD Fury for video cards and haven’t seen anything even close to this kind of instability after countless Windows 10 installs. I bought a Surface Pro 4 (i7/16GB RAM/512GB SSD) back in February and even with that I haven’t seen anything like this pickiness with the drivers.

This machine has got probably some of the best build quality that I have seen (and yes I’ve got a Mac Book Pro in the house) so far in a laptop but there is definitely some issues going on with drivers.