XPS 9570 Restart to Repair Drive Endless Loop Take 2

Hi all,

I'm pretty lost with this latest issue and I'm not sure what makes the most sense going forward with my XPS 9570 under warranty. About two months ago, a never before seen pop up alerted me to restart my computer to repair drive issues. It was unnerving enough that I made sure to backup personal documents and then I restarted. Confirming my fears, the computer never returned to the log in screen and I ended up having to do a completely clean install with a USB partition.

I spoke to Dell before this and we ran all sorts of tests as well as the many different troubleshooting options to circumvent the repair drive loop (most of which I already tried from hours of googling) which all failed to work. The computer would just restart over and over. I did receive some kind of driver error in one test but the Dell guy seemed to think there was nothing wrong because the clean install 'fixed' the issue and the computer was running normally again with no indications of an error.

Then today I got the same scary "press any key to skip drive repair" message when I was starting my computer. I remembered from last time that when I pressed a button I could still return to the home screen and the computer was running fine. The problem last time was that when I decided to let it run the scan without pressing any button, I never got that option to work again. Even if it flickered on the screen, pressing a button wouldn't do anything.

So here I am, afraid to shut down my computer knowing there is a high risk that I won't get back in again without losing all of my software (a lot of work for me) and having to spend a bunch of time I'd rather avoid. The thing is, I have no clue what is causing this. Is there a hardware error? If that is possible, can I trust Dell to identify it and what should I be requesting they do to repair it?

Do you think it's most likely a software issue? In which case, are there any methods you are aware of that can fix the problem without doing the restart that is likely to fail and lead to the same loop as last time?

Any advice would be extremely appreciated.

IM

 

Seems the SSD is having issues.

What is showing the warning? Can you post an image of the warning message?

Who makes your SSD? Can you run some maker diagnostics like Samsung Magician?

https://www.techjunkie.com/tools-check-ssd-health/

Sometimes removing the SSD, cleaning the SSD contacts, and reseating the SSD can resolve issues.

 

Thank you for the reply. My SSD is a kxg60znv1t02 nvme toshiba 1024gb so I'm afraid a Samsung specific tool won't help.

I would not be comfortable removing the SSD myself when it's under warranty so I guess a technician could try that but I'm not sure if Dell sends people for testing without a clear solution.

I can't replicate the warning but it popped up in the bottom right of my screen. I think it just had a red X and gave me an option to click to restart to repair the drive. The same exact thing happened in January. I can't find the same image on google but after I tried it and got stuck in a repair loop, I did find that there were others experiencing similar things. None of their solutions worked for me.

There is a way to bypass the automatic disk repair, or at least that is what I've found, but that seems like a bad solution unless there is unlikely certainty that this is just a glitch and nothing is wrong.

 

I had the same issue with my seagate SSHD after about a year of use. It was my drive that failed. Replacing a SSD is not that difficult. have a look at ifixit or youtube, and look at your model. It's a few screws and you are back in business.

 

Your SSD failed and it showed signs in the same way? Any idea why my clean install seemed to work for two months?

I assume this means yet another clean install of Windows and a dell repair guy having to come to replace the SSD? If so, anything specific I should make sure to be demanding from Dell to avoid getting screwed in any way?

Also, no idea if it is relevant but crystaldiskinfo says the health of my drive is 100%

 

Did you try running a Toshiba SSD utility?

https://ssd.toshiba-memory.com/en-amer/download/ssd-utility

Did you try running full preboot hardware diagnostics ePSA? (don't just randomly push buttons at boot up. figure out the correct 9570 key to press!)

Did you try the online quick test & full test options at Dell.com (enter your service tag to get those).

 

Thank you for the reply. I've tried to follow your Toshiba link but it asks me to select my SSD when I go to the download section and I have no idea which one of the choices matches with my kxg60znv1t02 nvme toshiba. Any suggestion?

I did not try running a full preboot hardware diagnostics this time around. I'm pretty sure I did that in January and it may have claimed a memory error which Dell support disregarded after the clean install showed no issues. I ran every possible bootup test I could find and the memory error is the only thing that stands out from memory but I do not want to run any tests now that require reboot out of justifiable expectation that I will never be getting back into my computer without a clean install after as that is what happened last time. Maybe not, but I'd rather try everything I can without restarting as the computer seems fine otherwise.

I have read that support assist is a privacy nightmare and I don't see any other way to run Dell diagnostics without it so I'm open ears to any other suggestions.