DELL INSPIRON 11 3162 WINDOWS 7 INSTALL INSTALL
DELL INSPIRON 11 3162 WINDOWS 7 INSTALL UPDATE

Yet it still shows the error above at POST, and pressing F1 pretty much immediately always results in a normal startup with no other problems.

DELL INSPIRON 11 3162 WINDOWS 7 INSTALL INSTALL

However, I had already set the BIOS to AHCI before I installed the drive and did a clean install of Windows 10. I installed a Samsung EVO 850 msata SSD as a primary drive and experienced the issue as described above.

Hopefully your extensive knowledge can be of service to myself and others. Once this is complete, the machine boots normally each and every time! Donate to say 'Thanks' if this post has helped save you time and money! 🙂

Disabling RAID does require jumping through a couple of hoops, but it’s relatively quick and easy. The problem apparently seems to be related, at least in part, to how the system processes the communication between the drive and the chipset via the Intel RAID controller.

DELL INSPIRON 11 3162 WINDOWS 7 INSTALL UPDATE

So, then, what’s the solution? Actually, it’s precisely the same thing I posted in my previous update as a response to a completely different problem: bypass the RAID controller and use AHCI interface instead. However, this option does not exist within Dell’s BIOS Setup. With other machines, the problem can be resolved by switching ON “Hot plug support” (or similar) in the BIOS Setup. This indicates that the problem has to do with the machine not detecting the drive quickly enough during POST to continue with the boot process. Interestingly, if the user presses F1 to retry, the machine then boots normally. The message you will see on a Dell Latitude if this happens to you is: Specifically, some of the newer Dell Latitude laptops (of which I purchase and service quite a large number) seem to struggle with Crucial SSDs. Reliability hasn’t been a concern with regard to the drives I’ve purchased for my clients, but on occasion, drive detection is a problem. I have seen this most recently with Crucial brand SSDs, which by and large have proven to be a good value - when they work. Occasionally a BIOS update on the computer or a firmware update to the drive can resolve the issue, but other times, the drive may simply be incompatible. This applies most notably to sleep/resume and cold boot detection of these devices, which sometimes are not detected at all on specific systems. A relatively new form of problem which has been introduced by the wider adoption of solid-state drives (and other drives with more particular power requirements than standard mechanical hard drives) is that of drive detection and compatibility.

Dell inspiron 11 3162 windows 7 install