XPS 15 - USB Win-Ult-64 Install

Has any one successfully installed Windows 7 via USB on the XPS 15? If so I would be interested to know how you did it eg: how you generated the USB installer, what usb port you used, bios settings etc...

So far I can boot via the usb drive (WinToFlash - Install Windows from usb - Home page) and the installer starts up. Once the installer UI is initialised I click install and get prompted a few seconds later for a cd/dvd driver?

The funny thing is if I put my original Win Ult 64 DVD in the dvd drive it continues with the install (obviously I don't need a cd/dvd driver as it's working)

Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

 

Thanks.

When you say the USB 3 wont work without a driver, do you mean the Windows Installer wont recognise the USB 3 port? Because the machine will boot and start the installer off a USB 2 memory stick on the USB 3 port. (that said the bios is in USB Compatibility mode, I assume that allows the USB3 ports to function also as a USB1/2?)

Maybe the "Windows Installer" doesn't like the USB 3 port in Compatibility mode?

I haven't tried the above mention method but my understanding is that's exactly what WinToFlash does anyway (I will try it to eliminate it as a cause though).

From memory I only tried the left USB ports (it was late) not the Esata/USB 2.0 combo port so I'll try that when I get home tonight.


There must be someone who has successfully installed Win7 via USB on XPS 15?

 

This is on and XPS 15 right? Which means the USB installer worked? I assume your CD/DVD drive worked?

 

Try to switch the USB into another port, make sure your bios is setup with the bootable "removable disk" option first,
Use this tool to create a Win 7 USB bootable OS from a BOOTABLE iso:

Microsoft Store: Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool Help

Let me know if you still get the error..

 

Because originally you said you had not tried installing via USB on a DELL XPS 15 but rather on a netbook. Correct I want to install via USB.

See below


FYI: I'm using a USB2 16Gb SanDisk

The USB3 ports will operate in "compatibility mode" which is a default BIOS setting. This allows the USB3 ports to also run as USB2 & USB1 ports, which happens to work fine inside a running version of Windows 7. If I then plug my "USB2 flash Windows 7 Installation Drive" in to the USB3 port it will boot via the flash drives MBR and load the Windows 7 installer kernel however....the kernel will not see the USB drive even though it should in theory because it's in "compatibility mode" at hardware level.

The confusing thing is the error message that the Windows 7 installer produces, telling me there is no CD/DVD driver and to load one (because my CD/DVD drive at this point is actually functional). What it should say it is; "I can't find the Windows 7 Install Media and/or the USB drive is not accessible" (because it knows it just booted from USB). For me that is a complete fail on Microsofts behalf


So the two left USB3 ports obviously run on one chipset and the right eSATAp/USB2 combo port uses another. The eSATAp/USB2 combo port as it turns out is a true USB 2.0 chipset and the ONLY USB port that the Windows Installer can see correctly on the Dell XPS L501.


So I finally completed the install via USB 2.0 successfully, this was using the wintoflash (which is very easy to use) to create the bootable USB flash drive using my DELL OEM Win7-Ult-64 DVD as the source. Also after the base install windows did have access to my flash drive without installing additional drivers so I was able to load the additional Dell drivers required for full functionality of the XPS 15 Laptop.

The question remains if you use a USB3 flash drive in the USB3 port would the Windows Installer see the USB drive? Also any flakiness with respect to USB2/3 on those ports could be attributed to the operation of "compatibility mode" in the bios. If people are having USB3 issues maybe they could try disabling this BIOS feature...just a thought.

 

Yes it is, I run into this problem myself many times, while I was trying to install Win 7 from a USB, on differents netbooks.
The driver missing are not the ones from the DVD/CD, but from the chipset as you said,

Here:

Install Failure: Windows cannot be installed to disk 0 partition 1.

You can see that is a very common problem...