Dell XPS M1330, the story doesn’t end
August 9, 2007 — Drew
My Dell XPS M1330 finally arrived yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised that it showed up after some confusion over its DHL tracking status.
As I have posted about previously, the first thing I always do when getting a new computer is to install a fresh copy of Windows without all the “crap” software installed. In this case, I also wanted to change the version of Windows from Vista Home Premium to Vista Ultimate basically for the benefit of the BitLocker feature.
Here’s the problem. You knew it was coming. When loading a non-OEM version of Vista that has not been modified by Dell to include the correct drivers the installation will fail with a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). Then when booting into safe mode to troubleshoot the problem the system hangs while trying to load the crcdisk.sys driver. It turns out that “safe mode with command prompt” will not even allow the system to boot.
So, I opened up a chat session with Dell support. After describing the problem Dell’s official response is “that the warranty does not cover installing a non OEM operating system (which means we only support installing the OS that came with the computer).” Dell Customer Care and I agreed that the problem most likely is with the SATA drivers. An option is to try to load the updated SATA drivers during the installation process. The only problem is there is a list of 10 or so SATA controllers contained in the driver that can be downloaded from Dell.com. My first attempt at trying a random controller from the list didn’t work. Dell could not confirm which SATA controller is in the XPS M1330. I requested that Dell Customer Care find the answer to this problem and they agreed to get back to me via email.
In the mean time I re-installed the OEM version of Vista Home Premium and got my laptop back up and running.
Updated 8/28/07 - Dell Customer Care has still not responded via email with the information on the SATA controller drivers that they agreed to follow up on.
Updated 1/13/08 - I’m still running Vista Home Premium that came with the laptop. I haven’t had any problems with it and have been afraid to try to get Vista Ultimate installed because I don’t know how many times the OEM version of Vista Home Premium that came with the system will activate. I’m satisfied to leave it as is for now.
August 9, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Hey
Shucks! Your story is more harrowing than mine! Thankfully you have found a temporary fix!
August 9, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Hi! As soon as they get back to you, could you post here (or send me an email) which SATA driver we are supposed to use? I’m trying to install x64 on my m1330 and I don’t know which driver to use. Thanks!
August 15, 2007 at 2:19 am
bleargh !
I do hope that this cheap “marketing” policy will soon become a MAJOR problem for those vendors that “promotes” these crazy commercial proposals from M$ …
Good Luck with the notebook, btw
September 2, 2007 at 7:16 am
I found the driver in the “Drivers and Utilities” CD that came with the laptop (PN: YN362 Rev A00 June 2007). I copy the content of the directory C:\I386\R154200 Intel(R) Matrix Storage Manager to an USB flash Drive and load it during Vista installation.
September 13, 2007 at 1:56 pm
The problem is hot-restarting vista…whatever kind of sense that makes. I’ve been in the IT field for 10 years and have never seen anything remotely like this. Fresh install of Vista volume licensed (non-oem) and the install goes flawlessly, but on first boot…it blows up. I tried to get into safe mode and I get BSOD. Try last known, BSOD. Nothing works…until I found another site that says to turn off the PC and let it sit for a second, then cold start it.
I do this and Vista loads fine. Then load the drivers off of the Dell Resource CD.
September 13, 2007 at 2:01 pm
PS: here’s a good writeup on it—look toward the bottom:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=157838
September 13, 2007 at 2:03 pm
NOTE: On some systems, at one point the system may not reboot properly and you will get whats called a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). Dont panic and dont try and read the bsod..its too quick in the reboot.
The reason for this is because your particular hard drive requires a driver. I have been successful in fixing the problem in two ways:
1. Dont hot restart. Turn it off for a few seconds and then reboot. It should go back to normal then and when you reinstall your drivers, you will reinstall a driver called the Intel Matrix Storage Manager. It is on your M1330 drivers disk and numbered R154198.
2. You can also reboot from the windows disk and click on repair when it gets to that point. It will come to a point where it gives you the option to install specific drivers. You would then insert the drivers disk and look specifically for the above driver.
And remember…dont panic…nothings broken
November 7, 2007 at 5:48 am
Thanks guys this really helped i have been banging my head against a wall over this. I notice if you turn it off completely after the end of the windows install the Dell splash screen takes much longer to clear, i assume while it fafs about with SATA drivers, but it doesnt do it if you just reboot.
December 12, 2007 at 7:07 am
thanks a lot dudes, ur comeents & blog was of great help to me & a friend of mine
we have exactly t same issue & never thought of t SATA driver, i even took it appart booting without certain components but of course issue persisted
well, thanks again
January 13, 2008 at 3:33 pm
The XPS M1330 dosen’t have a TPM module required for the BitLocker feature of Vista!!! Even if you do install Ultimate, you won’t be able to use BitLocker. I do like the feature that lets you put video backrounds. I have Home Premium on my XPS M1330. Ultimate wasn’t worth the extra money.
January 18, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Saviour!! I was just about to re-install home basic until I read this… A simple cold boot fixed the issue for me as well.
Thank you.
February 22, 2008 at 3:49 am
Cheers for this fix lads, I’ve just spent a day and a half reinstalling Vista 4 times before I came across this. The issue only started occurring after running Windows updates (53 of them) and I wasn’t looking forward to installing each one, one at a time…
You’ve saved me an awful lot of time and grief by coming across that fix for this ridiculously, poxy bug.
March 30, 2008 at 5:55 am
this restart BSOD got me too. once I had to re-install everything. The solution was to do a cold boot and all is well. This is weird. I did a network car upgrade and was asked to re-start. When it restarted, gave an error that the system did not shutdown properly. After that BSOD. Neways, cold boot solves it atleast.
April 4, 2008 at 5:26 am
usualy, when u try to install a SATA controller, when the list appears there is one selected in the list …
that one is the one that windows finds to be “the most compatible”
May 10, 2008 at 1:35 pm
You guys rock! Did IT work in the AF for 20 yrs and this had me stumped. Shut it down for 30 seconds and ran fine afterwards. Should have searched earlier!! 8o)
Thanks again!
Jeff
May 17, 2008 at 11:58 am
Okay Brainiacts, Ready for another one? I hope so, I running the XPS One Product Red, seems out of the blue it decideds to hang at shut down. All else seems okay, other then the typical Vista won’t accept outside drivers ie: DRM crapolla. I suspect this is the future and work arounds would be greatly appreciated, can’t use my soundtap on the new (vista Ultimate) systems, have to pull out the whole diehard XP for stream recordings. Anyway, what’s up with the shutdown hangs. PLEASE !!! HELP!!!! Thanks
May 23, 2008 at 9:30 am
and another one….
I’m really hoping someone can help out with this.
I installed XP on my M1330 by disabling sata in the BIOS. After install I read a guide on the net (which i can’t find now!) to tweak a driver setting by a digit or two. I did it!
Rebooted and enabled Sata - everything fine.
Problem is every few days - just randomly I get a nice BLUE SCREEN with the following error.
STOP: 0×000000F4 (0×00000003, 0×89B06908, 0×89B06A7C, 0×805D13B6)
Can anyone shed any light on how to stop this happening?
June 5, 2008 at 10:36 am
I got a Dell xps 1330 just a week ago and i’m struggling with the instalation of SP1 ever since. When I run the SP1 exe, after 20 secs I get the same internal error message. I tried everything - updating all drivers, disc scan/check, calling MS support center 10 times and still nothing..
Any suggestions?
June 5, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I’ve been having a video problem on my XPS M1330 for the last couple weeks. I’m in the process now of working on the issue with Dell support. We’ve replaced the motherboard, heat sink, processor, memory and hand rest. A new LED screen should be here tomorrow to try. So far the video issue has not been resolved, but is not a result of OS or drivers. I completely re-installed the OS from Microsoft media. The version that I installed was Vista with SP1 and it worked just fine.
I’ve never tried to upgrade Vista to SP1 on the Dell OEM install of Vista. If you have access to the media and would want a fresh installation I would go that route.