Trying AHCI Mode (XPS 15 9550)

As @ GoNz0 wrote, it's better for laptops to use sleep instead of hibernate.
Has anyone else problems with sleep?

 

I think those who find the battery drained may have wake timers on or wake on pattern match in the wake on lan options (along with wake on wireless lan in the BIOS)

 

Saaaay what? The what in the what now? Instructions please

 

google the following as I have been working on my house all day and can barely stay awake!

disable wake on pattern match
disable windows 10 wake timers

and the wake on wireless lan options somewhere in the BIOS near the bottom iirc.

 

Did you notice any performance increase in boot times when running AHCI?
I am running RAID at the moment and my boot times are not as fast as i'd like.I get the spinning circle underneath the Dell logo for well over 10 seconds. Which equates to a boot time of 25-30 seconds.
I'd like to try AHCI. Can you revert back to RAID using the same Safe Boot process?

 

Yeah, this is a good question. Also do we disable current drivers if we want to make the switch from RAID to AHCI? I have two drives not 32GB Cache option and get watchdog crash that some of you have been getting. Like what if in the future we get drives that aren't Samsung NVME? Can we still use the AHCI setting?

 

Considering I have a Toshiba and Microsoft supply a default NVMe driver, yes.

 

Regarding the reboot issue when using the Samsung drivers with the PM951 in AHCI mode, I updated my BIOS today to the new version that came out two days ago (1.2.19), and the issues seem to be fixed at last (reboot lasting around 25-30sec, drive not being detected) - I have successfully rebooted around 10 times in the past four hours or so, each time the reboot lasted about 10 seconds and each time the drive was detected normally.

Also I haven't had a single BSOD ever since I switched to the Samsung driver (around a week), hopefully the new BIOS will also not affect this.

I'd be interested in whether the new BIOS does indeed fix the problem for other people as well.

P.S. on Windows 10 I also disabled Hibernation and Fast Startup alongside the BIOS update, mainly in favor of dual booting with Arch Linux (Antergos) - I am not sure if this had anything to do with the issues being fixed, I don't believe so tbh but I'm just saying.

 

Hi,

Have you ever encountered with the problem that waking up from hibernate results in bold boot? (Unexpected shut down and Failure to recover from hibernate show up in Event Viewer). It happens only in AHCI mode for me. When I change to RAID mode it goes well.

 

Not with the Toshiba.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

 

Yes, I have. Only in AHCI mode for me as well, but only on Windows 10 (haven't tried on Linux yet). Windows 10 was installed in RAID mode, then I switched to AHCI without reinstalling, I stuck with the Microsoft AHCI driver and disabled hibernation in favor of dual booting with Linux, then re-enabled it again because I needed it.

Now to be perfectly honest, I cannot recall if I had the issue before disabling and re-enabling hibernation on Windows (this was quite some time ago), but I am positive that the laptop would just not resume from hibernation but perform a normal boot instead, and behave as though it had not been shutdown properly (apps would restore from abnormal termination, etc).

 

Hmm, I wonder if that only happens with Samsung SSDs. I use a 950 Pro

 

What SSD do you use? Mine is a 950 Pro 512GB. I installed my Windows 10 in AHCI directly and that started happening right after the installation with a clean system. It does not happen every time but with a high possibility (80% I'd say). I've tried disabling hibernation, disabling fast startup and enabling hybrid sleep but nothing help. After I switched to AHCI everything works well except some loss in 4K performance (~50MB/s in AHCI and ~40MB/s in RAID)

 

Mine has the PM951 512GB. Yeah, for me it also wouldn't happen every time I think, but surely around 80% of the time. Didn't care enough to fix it as I have been using Linux ever since, so unfortunately I cannot help you much with possible solutions. As for the performance, I didn't actually measure it, generally to be honest I didn't really feel any significant difference. But everything apart from that seems to be working well indeed - especially after flashing the 1.2.19 BIOS.

 

No problem. Thanks anyway

 

WIthout reading back through your posts, did you install the samsung NVMe 2.1 driver?

 

I have. But my system started freezing ramdomly after installing it (just saw something mentioning the same thing in this forum).

 

install version 2.0 https://1drv.ms/u/s!ArTAP9qwiGB0hZIbsFy0QMgRA3wtSQ

 

I have tried all the versions from 1.0. Haven't got any idea why

 

Time to look elsewhere for the cause, make sure everything is up to date including the chipset driver (try an auto update from device manager. Check the event viewer for clues, check anti virus (disable startup items and services and work backward if the problem stops to identify it)
Does it work with the windows NVMe driver?

Backup windows, install a clean version and see if it stops.

That should keep you busy

 

Hey guys new member here.

I recently experience a lot of BSOD Critical Process Died errors as soon as I input my password. I've been reading a lot of forums and they say switching from RAID to AHCI would stop these errors. I have the NVMe PM951 NVMe SAMSU drive. Should I clean install Windows 10 and set driver to AHCI, or can I just switch into AHCI mode using safe mode without a clean install?

Thanks

 

Google how to switch. No need to reinstall.

 

I was about to do exact same setup as you (Antergos dual boot - Arch with a breezy installer FTW) on a brand new XPS 13 (9360). First problem I noticed was that GParted won't recognise drive if set in RAID - so will have to switch to AHCI. So far though, the computer on Windows has been running great with fast boot times/long battery life and therefore I don't want to mess around too much with it. I know you mention you don't use your windows boot to often, but have you noticed a drop in battery performance when switching from the RAID to the AHCI? Also, did you point your Antergos install to include the UEFI boot in the same partition as the windows UEFI boot? Any issues?

What I gather from your posts is that switching to AHCI has messed up your hibernation function in Windows when using the stock Microsoft drivers. What about with the Samsung drivers? Is everything work perfectly now with those? (also, how does one easily go about telling Windows which drivers to use?)

 

Hey so I recently switched from RAID to AHCI and my dell xps 15 doesn't experience Critical Process Died BSOD anymore. HOWEVER, my computer freezes with no BSOD sometimes, and the only way to fix it is to restart it. Is there any solution to this problem??
Thanks

 

Are you using the Samsung driver? I've been having that problem as well, and the freezes went away as soon as I uninstalled the Samsung driver. However, now i'm back experiencing the BSODs of the standard Microsoft driver, but it's less often than the random freezes.

 

you need the samsung driver 2.0 not 2.1

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

 

Ah thanks. Dell seems to be unaware that you need to use the older driver. I've been talking to support about it, and they recommended I use the Samsung driver, but they sent me a link to 2.1

 

Yep this is Dell we are talking about
Seems to be a bug with this chipset as my x99 chipsets not complained with me 950 pro!

 

Yea thanks for the advice. Running the 2.0 driver seems to be no BSOD or freezes anymore.

 

I'm not sure if older drivers are available at Samsung.

 

They aren't, links have been posted probably 20 times in this forum. You can even check Gonz0's sig:
http://www.win-raid.com/t29f25-Recommended-AHCI-RAID-and-NVMe-Drivers.html

*on edit* looks like that link no longer gives the good 2.0s, use this one instead:
https://onedrive.live.com/?id=5014229B9E752333!30939&cid=5014229B9E752333

 

Thank you, I was going nuts trying to find the 2.0 driver set. The onedrive link you provided also has version 2.4.7.0; is that not a good version to use, then? I'm going to use it with the 960 Pro...

 

Yeah I did some digging around and found a OneDrive folder that had them.

 

Here https://1drv.ms/u/s!ArTAP9qwiGB0hZIbsFy0QMgRA3wtSQ

 

Hey I reinstalled the 2.0 driver and as I restarted my dell xps 15 froze and now everytime I restart it it says harddrive not installed? I've checked the bios and it says both ssd and harddrive are (none). I have the ssd model and I'm wondering how to get it to boot windows again...

 

Try resetting the BIOS

 

When I reset it, should I choose the original bios settings. Since I have switched it to ahci mode instead of original raid mode?

 

Just reset it then put it back to AHCI if that is what you're using

 

wow it works again...I think I will just stick to the original window drivers. Samsung driver causes too many problems.

 

To be fair the windows drivers cause all the problems, the samsung 1.1 and 2.0 work fine, 2.1 has an issue with this chipset.

I suggest you try 2.0 again as you may find you have no issue
Check you are on the latest BIOS as well.

 

ok yea im back at 2.0 seems to be no issues so far...hopefully it stays this way

 

Hey Gonzo,

My laptop was working fine until today when it froze while it was in ahci mode along with the 2.0 driver. At this point, could the issue itself be from the ssd? Also when it reboots in ahci, it says no harddrive found, so do I have to switch to raid mode every time this happens?

Thanks

 

Thank you.

 

I mean I suppose it could be, I had an 850 Evo in my father in law's computer that would work when booted from cold but wouldn't be detected thereafter. I had to RMA it to samsung...

 

The dirty shutdown bug should be fixed by updating the SSD firmware.

 

Ok aside from updating the firmware, what else can I do so that I wont experience any issues again... I've read in another post that you should uninstall intel rst as well? But I'm not sure if thats applicable in this case.

 

Have a read around the forums as it has all been covered before, it might take you a few hours to catch up but it is well worth it.

 

you mean this thread?
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...hardware-and-software-problems.784691/page-68

Also, when you say update the ssd firmware, do you use the samsung 960 evo firmware found here?

http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools.html

Lastly, after reading some other posts I assume using AHCI mode results in the the no harddrive issue...its not as bad as before since I just have to reboot it a couple times until it can get into windows but this is quite annoying

 

update the ssd firmware with the correct image for your ssd if it has one.

And yes that thread.

 

Im using the PM951 NVMe driver and on Samsungs website there are no firmware downloads for the PM951.

http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/products/flash-storage/client-ssd/MZVLV256HCHP?ia=831

Do you know where you can find the firmware?