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

markw51 · Mar 20, 2024

_william said:
@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

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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.

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

Did your laptop come with Pro pre-installed? If so then it picked up that version from your embedded license. Also did you sign in with a Microsoft Account? If yes then Edge would remember your settings when your account re-syncs.

SlicEnDicE · Mar 20, 2024

_william said:
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...

As others mentioned, your Windows key is embedded into your BIOS. And Windows setup automatically detects this and installs the appropriate version based on this key.

_william said:
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...

Yes, if you use an MS account, which I am certain you do, Edge will remember everything including all Edge settings you had prior to clean installing and after it has synced with your account.

_william said:
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.

This can be caused by many things, and it is very hard to tell what makes this particular drive do that. There are tools though that can tell you what process and what file is in use on your drive.

_william said:
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.

Yes this is "normal" behavior, especially if you hurry too quickly into MS store updating the apps. First ensure Windows Update has completed all other updates and that Windows has completed all post install tasks before you even attempt to enter Windows Store.

_william said:
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

This issue might be caused by same issue mentioned above, but could also be caused by too many windows open at the same time to same place and file indexing enabled for external drives. It could be anything really. I have folders with thousands of subfolders and millions of files and Explorer is stable for me. The files are not media files though. It could be that in your case the image preview cache is causing these crashes since you have so many files and windows open at the same time.

_william · Mar 20, 2024

@hsehestedt I see. Thanks.

_william · Mar 20, 2024

@SlicEnDicE Thanks for all those answers. Well, then I guess it was successful, which is good news.

_william · Mar 22, 2024

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

Edit: for anyone who comes in the future, this is wrong: my Service-Tag is indeed still being recognised after-all; something about a search I made on dell.com with my Service-Tag immediately after Clean-Installing gave me cause to think otherwise, but I can't remember what it was now.