The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Windows 8 on XPS?

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by agrzesiak, Feb 28, 2013.

  1. agrzesiak

    agrzesiak Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    24
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    So I bought a Dell CPS L521x and it came today and I wanted to put Windows 8 on it and I was so excited until I tried to install it and it wouldn't install. I got to the point where it goes through the installation process and gets to a screen with Windows 8 title and the little circle dots going clockwise but then it just crashes and says that "windows 8 cannot be installed". I made sure that all the incompatible drivers and such were in uninstalled but still won't work. What should I do. Thanks
     
    agrzesiak, Feb 28, 2013
    #1
  2. c0derbear

    c0derbear Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    95
    Messages:
    661
    Likes Received:
    10
    Trophy Points:
    31
    If you're upgrading a current Win 7 install, check to see if your machine is setup to boot via BIOS mode or UEFI mode.

    Win8 pretty much requires UEFI mode, Win 7 can go either way.

    You can NOT switch the mode without doing a clean install (e.g. if it's already in BIOS mode you can't just switch to UEFI and boot Win 7).

    The other thing that can get in the way that I can think of would be the Intel Rapid Start stuff. My advice would be to disable and uninstall all of the intel storage related drivers to make sure there is no conflict, and if desired reinstall them after the win8 migration is complete.

    In fact, to make life easier and more reliable, I'd actually uninstall ALL Dell drivers before doing a Win8 upgrade, to make sure there are no wacky conflicts.

    Of course, when I moved to Win8 I did a clean install, but I am obsessive about having a "clean" setup. I was also using a 120Gb mSATA SSD as the OS host drive instead of the HDD.

    I don't know how an upgrade in place works from Win7 to Win8, I've never tried that.

    Best of luck.
     
    c0derbear, Feb 28, 2013
    #2
  3. seeker_moc

    seeker_moc Notebook Virtuoso

    Reputations:
    354
    Messages:
    2,141
    Likes Received:
    21
    Trophy Points:
    56
    Win8 does not require UEFI, as I installed it fine on a Studio XPS 1645 that has a regular pre-UEFI BIOS. However, I think that you're right to the extent that if your machine is UEFI capable, you must use UEFI. Also, I'm pretty sure that if your machine is UEFI, you also must have your boot drive structured as GPT instead of MBR, which will likely require a complete wipe and repartition if you're current running Win7 (most likely using MBR).

    Also, you can use Win8 upgrade to do a clean install, you just need to do this to get it to activate correctly: http://lifehacker.com/5984278/how-to-do-a-clean-install-of-windows-8-with-an-upgrade-disc
     
    seeker_moc, Feb 28, 2013
    #3