Bad BIOS? Bad Luck. Dell XPS will not load windows but will load Ubuntu.

[BallOfSpray]

My Dell XPS was a great workhorse for years and then one day It crashed. Dell diagnostics said my hard drive was toast. No problem, I have everything backed up. Dell sent me a USB key with a factory restore image and I got a new hard drive.

The restore software tests the drive and says it is good but it fails when it tries to partition the drive so I purchased another drive. The second drive also shows same error.

Seems like the issue must be the USB restore drive so I buy a copy of Win10 on DVD. Same problem.

I try to install Ubuntu and it works perfect.

So it is not the drives and it is not the Windows install. I covered that with the process of elimination.

How the heck can that be?????

Ideas?

 

[Ironsounds]

Hello... Well there are different communication modes for the SATA drive in your BIO's (IDE/AHCI)... and different SATA hardware chips installed on the MB's... IDE mode is pretty universal communications mode and typically doesn't need a "pre-installed" driver before a Windows install... AHCI mode typically needs a driver for WIN8 and earlier versions... Win10 will have included SOME of these drivers in the install package.

Look to see what your Current SATA mode is set at in your BIO's... DELL MB's typically use Chinese, and non name brand company hardware chips in them, and finding support or drivers for them for newer OS versions can be tuff or non existent. dell driver pagers will include a "pre-install" AHCI driver , for the MB chips, but only for the OS version that the computer was originally sold/equipt with.

So as "simple test" change your SATA port you are using in the BIO's, to "IDE mode" save and exit, and see if a install can continue?