Solved Dell Latitude. Can't Clean-Install because of "AHCI" and "RAID" complications.

BamaInArk said:

The recovery will basically reinstall the OS as loaded when the user initially turned on the system. Someone above mentioned preserving this hidden partition on your drive. This will be a special Dell recovery partition that not only includes the Bios/UEFI update utility but also all the software required for a reinstallation of all default software. So larger than the normal Recovery Partition. As mentioned you may or may not wish to preserve that or simply wipe the whole drive for a clean install.

Click to expand...

Sorry, what do you mean by a "hidden partition"?

Once I have access to stable a stable internet-connection, I'm going to delete all the partitions indexed as "Drive 0" in the following image, presuming that will successfully effect a Clean-Install. It needs a Clean-Install, a mere Factory-Reset isn't fixing some of the problems that came about after I messed around with the Permissions of "C:\" folders.

Now when I look at that picture...I see there's no factory image/partition on the disk. Only a DELL support recovery image/partition. Not much is lost with a full wipe. But another possibility is to grab the latest recovery image from DELL and use that. then there is no need to manually check that all drivers are the best version. And all Dell support software is available too.

Not entirely sure what bloat Dell likes to stick on their default recovery images though. I don't use Dell as a brand and try to avoid any brands that kinda forces stuff on you...

SlicEnDicE said:

Now when I look at that picture...I see there's no factory image/partition on the disk. Only a DELL support recovery image/partition. Not much is lost with a full wipe. But another possibility is to grab the latest recovery image from DELL and use that. then there is no need to manually check that all drivers are the best version. And all Dell support software is available too.

Not entirely sure what bloat Dell likes to stick on their default recovery images though. I don't use Dell as a brand and try to avoid any brands that kinda forces stuff on you...

Click to expand...

You mean the picture in my reply to BamalnArk.

Regarding Drivers, I'm going to use the Windows Update tool, the "Dell Command | Update" app, and the "Intel Driver & Support Assistant" tool to get them; connect all of the devices I plan to use with the computer in the foreseeable future, so as to auto-install the relevant Drivers for those devices; then manually just check through Device Manager against the internet to see that they're all up-to-date; then just let the afore-mentioned apps take care of the system for me thereafter.

Yes, one thing I'm hoping to achieve by Clean-Installing is to actually dig-out by the root any and all invasive fiddling Dell did to the laptop before they sold it to me; I feel like a couple of little niggling problems here and there with the computer that I've noticed since buying it are probably due to them--e.g. the annoying "beep" that plays every time you toggle the "Mouse Keys" function with the Num-Lock key (do this a lot when using Blender), no way to turn it off, no matter what.

_william said:

It needs a Clean-Install, a mere Factory-Reset isn't fixing some of the problems that came about after I messed around with the Permissions of "C:\" folders.

Click to expand...

That isn’t how it works, if you were actually completing a proper factory reset, there is no longer anything wrong with the permissions or anything else you tampered with because whatever you did prior to the factory reset, no longer exists.

Also, there is a simple way to reset permissions to the default state.

antspants said:

That isn’t how it works, if you were actually completing a proper factory reset, there is no longer anything wrong with the permissions or anything else you tampered with because whatever you did prior to the factory reset, no longer exists.

Also, there is a simple way to reset permissions to the default state.

Click to expand...

Generally this is the case, but since it is not a full factory reset but just a Windows reset, it may not quite work as intended...I've had this happen a few times...only way to fix it was to wipe everything.

SlicEnDicE said:

But another possibility is to grab the latest recovery image from DELL

Click to expand...

Yes, a link was provided. I didn’t realise the Factory Partition was absent.
Terminology can be a problem when communicating. I am having PTSD issues from prior threads on the forum.

No worries, we all have issues in one form or another. You're not alone! Some just don't admit it while others do.

Can I just make one suggestion? If you are going to perform a clean install, just make a backup copy of your drivers, just in case. To so, follow these steps:

Make a folder to save your drivers. I'll assume C:\Drivers_Backup but use whatever you want.

Open an elevated command prompt.

Run this command:

pnputil /export-driver * C:\Drivers_Backup

That is all. Just make sure to save that folder to somewhere else so you don't lose it when doing your clean install.

I was about to suggest the same thing but using PowerShell. Great job @hsehestedt

SlicEnDicE said:

I was about to suggest the same thing but using PowerShell.

Click to expand...

Great minds think alike, and so do we

hsehestedt said:

Can I just make one suggestion? If you are going to perform a clean install, just make a backup copy of your drivers, just in case. To so, follow these steps:

Make a folder to save your drivers. I'll assume C:\Drivers_Backup but use whatever you want.

Open an elevated command prompt.

Run this command:

pnputil /export-driver * C:\Drivers_Backup

That is all. Just make sure to save that folder to somewhere else so you don't lose it when doing your clean install.

Click to expand...

I learned something today, thanks

_william said:

I'm almost certain

Click to expand...

Interesting thread here. Please note the comment above is almost guaranteed to prolong the pain.

@_william

If that is a 11 or 12 gen intel machine, it probably does need the rst drivers in the installation media \sources\boot.wim

I dont know if switching to ahci mode will get around that.

Switching to ahci isnt mentioned by DEll in their literature, they just say the rst drivers must be added to the installation media.

I explained how to integrate the drivers in another thread.

The drivers need to be added to the bootable image which for boot.wim is image 2

Aonther way is to load them on the fly using f6 method, but I always prefer to integrate.

This is only an issue for 11,12,13 and presumably 14 gen intel oem machines.

These are the drivers supplied by Dell dell-rst-winpe11.zip

It is not hard to do.

if you have the installation media on a usb stick, copy boot.wim from the usb stick sources folder onto your hard drive, so you have e.g. c:\boot.wim

create an empty folder to mount the wim image e.g. create a folder c:\mount

at admin cmd prompt mount image 2 of boot.wim

dism /Mount-Image /ImageFile:"c:\boot.wim" /index:2 /MountDir:"c:\mount"

integrate the drivers, so if you extract the zip to a folder caled c:\dell-rst-winpe11

dism /IMAGE:"c:\mount" /ADD-DRIVER /DRIVER:"c:\dell-rst-winpe11" /RECURSE /ForceUnsigned

unmount commit,

dism /Unmount-Image /MountDir:"c:\mount" /commit

then you replace the original boot.wim in the usb stick sources folder with the c:\boot.wim you have just updated with drivers

SIW2 said:

This is only an issue for 11,12,13 and presumably 14 gen intel oem machines.

Click to expand...

Interesting...

SlicEnDicE said:

Interesting...

Click to expand...

I have a Dell Inspiron and must use the RST drivers as my Bios will not let me select AHCI mode. I believe some Dell laptops / PC's do allow the change but on mine it does not. It is also a 13th Gen i7.

Must be a Dell/OEM thing...as mentioned.

I did a clean install of a Dell Inspiron 5400 a few weeks ago with an 11th Gen Intel Processor. The SATA configuration was preset to Raid. Dell instructed me to change from Raid to AHCI in BIOS, save and exit, while rebooting hit F12 to access the 1 time boot menu, delete every partition that I'm allowed to and to Format the last man standing and select to install W11. Once installed,Windows Update installed drivers and after running Dell Update, customised Dell drivers were reinstalled. I also installed Dell Supportassist ( which has long tentacles) as, if I needed support from Dell this would be needed. One thing to consider, if the drive partitions are deleted, it may be a good idea to reflash the BIOS as the recovery file would also be deleted. Hope this helps.

Great with a bit of hands on experience. Very helpful @Mitch

@SlicEnDicE Hi, so I had another attempt at the Clean-Install today, this time ensuring that all partitions on the Drive were deleted before commencing. But a couple of things make me suspect it wasn't successful.

At no point in the installation-process did it ask me which version of Windows I wanted--as I think it's otherwise supposed to do--it just went ahead and installed 11 Pro without even a notification to that effect. This is exactly what happened in the "Factory-Reset" cycles I had previously executed...

Microsoft Edge seems to have somehow remembered some of my browser settings post-Clean-Install: it opens by default onto google.com, as I had set it to before attempting the Clean-Install; it has also remembered by Bookmarks. I don't know if this has to do with using the same Microsoft account as before though...

After messing-up the Permissions of the "C:" Drive before setting-about Clean-Installing, I would find that my Samsung portable "T7" SSD would most-often fail to Eject when prompted to do via the System-Tray (a separate portable SSD to the one I'd put the Media Creation Tool on); I'd receive this warning:

"The device is currently in use. Close any programs or windows that might be using the device and then try again".

when certainly the portable SSD was not in use, at least not as far as I could see. My workaround in this situation is to always shut-down the computer before disconnecting the SSD. So this problem still persists post-Clean-Install. That Samsung SSD is very popular and is as reputable as any modern commercial piece of electronics could hope to be.

The Microsoft App Store most-often fails to install apps, or at least, it seems very buggy: with Downloading-Bars failing to increment, and apps "successfully" installing without any indication that they have done so. And sometimes apps fail to uninstall likewise--it just displays the "uninstalling app..." message forever.

File Explorer crashed a few times today when exploring a large personal directory of about 80GB in size with a few thousand files and several hundred folders in it; I was exploring two identical copies of this directory, one on the Internal Drive and one on an External Drive, using parallel windows

==========================

On the other hand. There is no "C:\Windows.old" folder to be seen, as opposed to when I was merely Factory-Resetting.

Also, my Dell Service-Tag is not recognised by dell.com anymore; whereas with the "Factory-Resets" it was still being recognised.

==========================

Thanks for all your help so far. Do you have any thoughts on all this?

_william said:

At no point in the installation-process did it ask me which version of Windows I wanted

Click to expand...

If you have a system that comes pre-installed with Windows, it will have a key in the embedded in BIOS that tells Windows setup what edition of Windows to install. If you want to be presented with an option as to what edition to install, do this:

Create a text file and name it ei.cfg. Place these two lines into that file:

[Channel]
Retail

Make sure to use a plain text editor like notepad so that no special formatt8ing characters are inserted.

Save that file to the \sources folder on your Windows installation media. That is all! Now, if you start a clean install, you will be presented a choice of what edition to install.