Dell XPS 8500 - Windows 8 Opens Up Drives On Bootup
Apr 19, 2013
I just bought this Dell XPS 8500 with Win 8 on it and although I'm not that happy with this OS I guess there is a learning curve so I'll try for awhile.
For some reason, after I had uninstalled Mcafee from the start up screen and also added a few items to the startup screen, when I reboot or do a cold boot, instead of getting the startup screen, I am getting the desktop along with about 5 disk partitions and a couple programs that I installed. While this is not bad since I can just "x" out of them, it's irritating and wonder how I can fix this. I would like to ultimately just boot up to the desktop if possible without anything else opening up.
I have Windows 8 installed on 2 Samsung SSDs - one is 840 Pro and the other is 840 Evo. This is because I work on both video and music production and would like to keep things separate.
At first I tried cloning an "old" SSD on to both Pro and Evo to make life easy, but it was a total mess:
I would boot Windows 8 on either Evo or Pro, and before the password prompt, Windows would fire up a Checkdisk on one (or more) of the 5 HD I have (please find the logs and disklayout in the attachments).
This would usually happen if for eg, I'm working on Evo and then I restart to work on Pro - or vice-versa.
But sometimes I would be working on either one of them, and this flag notification would popup asking me to restart because Windows needs to perform a diskcheck.
What is strange to me is that if I do a manual diskcheck (right-click -> Properties -> Tools), it would complete it, the notification disappears but would return a second or two later.
There was a minor issue where for eg, some options in the Control Panel were still pointing to drive H: which before the cloning, was my original C: drive.
Otherwise all software was working perfectly fine.
So I decided to do a clean re-install on both Pro and Evo hoping to solve this diskcheck issue once and for all.
This was 10 days ago, and for the past 10 days I had used almost exclusively the Evo drive. Today I need to work on Pro but Windows wouldn't get past the diskcheck and on to the password prompt.
It's saying "Preparing for Repair", then changes to "Diagnosing your PC" but then this blue screen pops up asking me to choose between Shut Down or Advanced Options.
This happened on rare occasions, but before the fresh install, I would do this perhaps a couple of times in a row (i.e. go to the blue screen Advanced Options and click Exit and Continue to Windows 8) restart, and it would eventually go past the diskcheck and allow me to log in and work. But today it just won't do it.
EDIT: I don't know if it matters but as it is now, it automatically boots up on Pro unless I hit F12 and choose to boot on Evo. But as I said earlier I had only been using Evo for the past 10 days since the re-install.
Attached please find the Srt logfiles which I found by following a path shown to me on that blue screen.
The strange thing is that the path started with drive H: and why drive H: and not C: (i.e. the Pro drive, being the current Windows boot drive). But when I booted on Evo, and went on drive J: (the drive letter that Pro is assigned when I'm on Evo), I found the logfiles there.
Just received this for Christmas and turned it on. It will show the Alienware logo and F8/F12 prompts. After that the screen goes blank. Start it up again, goes thru logo screen and then a blue screen pops up saying that your pc couldn't start. It comes up with different options like safe modes and disabling options. Choosing any of these options just shuts down the pc. Its an X51 running or attempting to run windows 8.
My brand new XPS 8500 with WIndows 8 has an intermittent blackscreen. Only way to get past it is to power down and power up the PC. Using a Dell 23" monitor. Since machine and monitor are brand new, I will contact Dell tomorrow to return. I don't relish resolving an intermittent problem over the phone with India support. I have searched these forums for blackscreen topics and there are several but no definitive solution.
I recently bought a Dell XPS 8500 with Windows 8 on it. I did a clean install of Windows 7 on that machine and would like to use the Windows 8 OEM license on it on my Dell Inspiron 17r SE laptop.
I tried typing in my key to do a clean install on the laptop but I got this error message:
The product key entered does not match any of the Windows images available for installation. Enter a different product key.
I bought these machines and therefore paid for the software, I should be able to install them on any machine I want. All of my machines are Dell, why can't I do this? What's going on?
Cannot create a Restore Point. I try thru Control Panel -> System and Security -> System -> System Protection.
No available drives show under Protection Settings.
When I try to launch thru System Config -> System Restore, a pop-up tells me Starting System restore, but that just hangs there forever. I have to stop it in Task Manager.
I have tried sfc - no reported problems.
Malwarebytes Pro and anti-virus report no problems.
I am having trouble reinstalling windows 8 on my Dell XPS 8500. Since installing a new SSD and having reset the BIOS using a jumper, my copy of Windows 8 will no longer detect my product key that i assume is embedded in the BIOS.
What is the procedure for walking in a unit to Dell Canada for repair? How do I protect my confidential data? Will Dell repair my two month old machine if i walk in without their OEM hard drive?? I hope to they do. What if it were stolen? I don't care about the cost and don't want anything for free, I just want to get my system working so I can rebuild it. I am only on an iPad.
I have a Dell XPS 8500 win 8.1. I recently installed Linux Mint 17 on an external HD which booted from GRUB. I now removed Mint 17 ok but I'm left with a reference to 'UBUNTU' in my bootloader. I'm unable to remove this reference. this reference to UBUNTU prevents me from booting from a LINUX USB. I think I need to repair the bootloader but can't and I have tried all sorts of.....FIXBOOT, FIXMBR. etc.
I just got an XPS 8500 with 64-bit Win 8 (non-Pro). I'd like to load a lot of XP apps from my ancient machine. Is there a way to load/run them? I've heard of HYPER-V, but it only runs on Win 8 Pro. There may be other solutions, but I don't know which to choose. I'd like to feel comfortable that whatever it is will work. If the answer is No, should I go to 32-bit Win 7 or 8 (and would THEY work?) or some other answer?
I am trying to upgrade an xps 8500 to windows 8 pro. It's an i7 system with 16 gig RAM. It was running windows 7 64 bit.
I made the first upgrade. It seemed to work fine. I updated drivers but when I attempted to add the windows media center the system failed -- on reboot it indicated the update could not be made and the previous version of windows 8 pro had been restored. I tried again, and this time it indicated that there were corrupted files and the system could no longer boot (error was 0xc000021a). It was not able to fix the disk issue automatically.
With Microsoft support I created a windows 8 pro boot drive on USB. At first the software would not even recognize a drive on which to install the operating system. That was resolved, and I was able to install windows 8 pro. But now every time I restart, the system goes back to the original problem (corrupt files), meaning I have to reinstall windows 8 pro, and so on. I have formatted the HDD as part of the installs: Partition 3 of Drive 0 (the other partitions are: Drive 0 partition 1 (1 meg used) OEM (reserved), partition 2 recovery (8.2 meg used) and drive 1 29.8 meg unallocated.
Windows installs updates (22 in number) automatically on restart, and these may be the source of the problem.
I have checked the drivers. They all seem up-to-date. The Bios is A09 (I think, in any case it is the latest version).
I have a XPS 8500 with preinstalled windows 8. I tried to install Ubuntu 12.10 on it. When I partitioned the disk, I accidentally format the whole disk. Then I could not restart to Windows 8. I didn't make any backup or recovery media. How to restore factory image?
I just purchased an XPS 8500 with Windows 8 (NOT Pro). I want to use a 120GB SSD drive as the boot drive. I tried using the Dell Backup & Restore function to put the system image on the SSD.
However, the HDD that came with the PC is 2TB. When I go to install the image on the SSD, I get an error message that the SSD is too small.
Do I need to (order and then) use a Windows 8 install disk?
I'm trying to run the Dell Backup and Recovery application on a new windows 8 xps 8500. Unfortunately all the tile labels are only showing IDS tags eg: IDS_DS_022,IDS_DS_003 and when I click on a tile the subsequent window is also full of different IDS tags. I've tried reinstalling the app but no change.
Ever since I installed Windows 8 (and now Windows 8.1 Pro Preview Build 9431), I hear occasional buzzing sounds while playing .mp3 files on my desktop computer (Dell XPS 8500). This occurs using both iTunes and Winamp. The .mp3 files play fine on other devices, such as my iPod. This makes me suspect that this is a Windows problem.
I have a brand new Dell XPS 8500 with Windows 8. I did my initial software load and wanted to create a system image. The image fails with error code 0x80780119. This is the sequence I ran:
1) Control Panel
2) Windows 7 File Recovery
3) Create a system image
4) On a hard disk (External hard drive selected with 1.36 TB free space)
5) Program states that the following drives will be backed up without allowing me to add or remove drives (EFI System Partition, OS(C:)(System, and WINRETOOLS(System). I hit "start backup"
6) Create a system image box opens and it starts to run the process and then errors out and says the backup failed. The error message says there is not enough disk space to create the volume shadow copy on the storage location and it lists error code 0x80780119.
I believe it's not a problem with the destination drive where the final system image will be created. It has to be a problem with one of the partitions on the one and only hard drive inside the machine. Using Disk Management I can see the following partitions on the harddrive:
Just bought this new XPS 8500 great computer. However, trying to learn the new Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10 is an experience. Am unable to see all the favorites and realize maybe I should organize them better. Therefore, how would you setup a folder(s) to better organize favorites. I tried to follow the directions by going to Windows website and they state that you click on the add to Favorites and an option related to a folder shows up. However, I only see the option to add to Favorites or to pin to start.
Brand new Dell 8500 XPS running Win 8 64 bit with IE 10. I transferred my favorites from my Win VISTA machine using Easy Transfer which caused the lost of many IE Fav Icons. Sometimes when I click on a favorite the icon will show up and some won't even though they are present on my Win VISTA machine.
Is there away to restore those Fav Icons which are supposed to be there? I realize all websites don't support the Fav Icons.
I have an xps 8500 and it won't update to windows 8.1 from the store. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the update KB2871389 and nothing happens. . I am also running in administrator mode while I am doing this and the windows troubleshooter says something about admin privileges.
I have recently set up a Win 8.1 notebook and from a cold boot Win comes up with a confusion by showing part of my email address as user (a hangover from a MS account) but, after saying that the username is incorrect, then allows me to enter my local account / network creds.
I decided that, since the machine could go on the road from time to time, I would reintroduce the need for username and password. I would like to tidy up this mixed-up situation by having to enter my local account details and not have this 'error' message from dear old MS pop up. Having part of my email address appear on bootup is hardly useful in terms of security.
Okay now I have an issue with windows, namely secureboot and UEFI. HP Pavilion laptop that came preinstalled with windows 8.1 but didnt like it and wanted a dual boot.
So I gave him Ubuntu 13.10 as it has UEFI support and everything was fine until we updated to Ubuntu 14.04. Sadly it did not load windows via grub and windows would fail to boot.
However after repairing the windows boot manager I knew I had to reinstall linux which would normally be fine but now windows and windows alone now boots, no grub, no nothing.
I heard recently of this story: [URL] ....
However I checked everything and windows seems to be the cause of my woes. As does UEFI. Now we would like to keep windows on this machine however I am thinking of removing the /efi partition
I have setup Win8.1 to blow thru the password input necessity. But I am wanting to speed my bootup even more! (Greedy aint I?) I want to blow threw the entire password screen and go automatically to the desktop. (I have set up the blow thru of the Start Screen/Lock Screen etc etc etc) I have looked everywhere for direction on this tweek, all without luck!....
I didnt have this problem in windows 7 and it makes me want to go back to it sometimes because if this glitch.
windows 8 boots and after logging in,sometimes doesnt start programs that are set to load.
EFI installed with GPT
intel 2600 16gb memory nvidia 580gtx
2tb drive
I have fastboot disabled
programs that sometimes dont load
msi afterburner
logitech mouse software (without the software my g5 mouse is slow)
hp software
antivirus
rebooting the computer fixes the problem and all programs load.
This problem also happens on a fresh install after a couple of week and the event log is field with errors stating the service could of start, failed start, couldnt find service.
I ran chkdsk,sfc and all passed. And like I said rebooting the computer loads fine and event log for the reboot shows no errors.
I just updated to 8.1 two days ago. I agreed to the update when my computer boot up, without issue, and was forced to reboot immediately (which, by the way, is idiotic. I wanted to do the install at night when I went to bed not lose my only computer for 1.5 hours that were suppose to be spent on volunteer activities because it won't let me delay the install!)
When my computer next booted up it was SLOW. I opened up task manager and it showed me at 100% disk IO, even though non of the programs running used enough disk IO individually to be anywhere close to the 100% mark. Even after all of my programs *finally* finished booting up the disk IO still showed at 100%, but every program on my task manage showed less then 0.3 MB/s and most were at 0.1. Eventually the diso IO goes back to a reasonable level, but I had enough time to search all over google and fail to find any answers before my IO went to 0 so it was hardly immediately. This is substantially slowing my bootup process.
I have checked all the bootup programs and they all look right. a *quick* scan of msconfig bootup (I already use a selective bootup from msconfig) looked right as well. I ran a malware scan and nothing came up. However, I didn't expect any of those to be the problem anyways. My computer was fin when it booted up without 8.1 I used it for 20 minutes visiting the same website I always do, then I was forced to do an install and everything was broken. This clearly sounds like it was caused by the 8.1 upgrade.
I will update with screen captures of task manager when I next reboot; My disk IO stayed at 100% so long I figured I could take the captures when I needed them, then it finally went to 0% the one time I actually wanted it to stay at 100% ...
Ever since I've built this computer and installing the latest drivers, I've run into a problem where the computer BSODs with a "DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE" error, and it happens whenever it's been off or in sleep mode for a long time. I've tried looking up solutions and most say that a bad driver is the issue, but the device manager doesn't show me any problems.
My Intel HD 4600 graphics puts 3 little apps to be started automatically. I know they are related to: intercepting hotkeys - hkcmd.exedisplaying tray icon - igfxtray.exedisplaying settings GUI - igfxpers.exe The thing is that I don't use hotkeys and have disabled them in Intel Graphics options, I've also removed Intel Graphics icon from the tray.
Thus, I'd expect the first two Intel apps to be removed from items set to auto-start at system bootup. However, they are still there. Is it correct? Shouldn't they be disabled when related functions are turned off?
Is it safe to simply delete the related registry entries and leave only the last app?
I have a windows 8 desktop computer with 2 monitors attached. I can span the desk top across both screens. I use this for document editing, picture file, etc. No gaming. When I span a program across the 2 screens (say Xn View for my pictures) if a dialogue window comes up (say to save a picture), it usually comes up right in the middle of the desktop which is where the two screens meet. This makes it a little difficult to read and I end up dragging it to one side.
Can I change where these dialogue windows come up? I really don't care which monitor they are centered on, just as long as they don't span the middle where the screens come together.
