1 Rookie
•
20 Posts
0
37
XPS 410 -- Remove Info' Screen Between Splash Screen and OS Boot Up
Gentlepersons,
I recently put back into service a Dell XPS 410. This included a SATA HDD w/Windows 7, optical drive, new CMOS battery and 6GB of RAM.
There’s this odd information screen (pictured) that appears in between the Dell splash screen and the Windows initial boot screen. I’ve seen something like this before on other Dells that I fixed up but it always disappeared after the OS got installed. This screen won’t go away. It’s there at every startup or reboot and stays up for about 30 seconds before Windows starts booting. There’s a flashing cursor after the last line of information that doesn’t show in the photo. Pressing ENTER doesn’t do anything. Pressing it multiple times causes a beeping sound when the button is pressed and most times it makes no difference. Sometimes instead of the Windows boot up screen coming up, a different window comes up asking what operating system you want to load. The only option presented is windows 7. Near the bottom of that page there is an option to run a memory diagnostic. I’ve done this and the memory checks out okay. The HDD, like the other hardware, is salvage from other PCs but it passes the long and short tests by Seatools For DOS. The HDD wasn’t really wiped, I just deleted all the existing partitions and had Windows create new partitions at the beginning of OS installation. Same as I’ve done on numerous other Dells in the past.
Unlike similar issues I’ve looked at online, there is never any error message, just the same information. Initially there was a Floppy Drive Seek Error listed last with the option to (F1) continue or (F2) go into setup. This went away after turning off the floppy drive in setup. The BIOS is the latest available and there is no option that gets rid of the info’ screen. It runs under default values except for where I changed the boot order (optical first, HDD second) and turning off unused SATA ports.
One thing that I thought was a little weird is that the HDD is listed separately in the BIOS under its model # rather than being listed under the “SATA Hard Drive” heading. Under SATA Hard Drive it just says “Not Present”. The installed HDD certainly is a SATA drive.
Windows runs fine – after the additional 30 seconds added to the startup time by this info’ screen.
Any ideas?
Thank you for your kind attention!
Edit: I don't know where the picture is. I've done the "insert image" thing twice and I see no picture when I view the post.
Grant
redxps630
9 Legend
9 Legend
•
11.5K Posts
1
August 29th, 2024 02:54
Re: It’s there at every startup or reboot and stays up for about 30 seconds before Windows starts
my 410 boots very fast and I am using an old hdd.
Re: It’s there at every startup or reboot
I think RAID ON in bios may be causing the extra info screen with blinking cursor. Check your bios and make sure it is ATA. You may need to do another clean install of Win 7 if it was previously done under RAID ON.
(edited)
Gchagen
1 Rookie
1 Rookie
•
20 Posts
0
August 28th, 2024 23:25
Okay, let's see if this actually posts....
Chino de Oro
8 Wizard
8 Wizard
•
5.9K Posts
0
August 28th, 2024 23:50
Your picture is not visible but I can suggest a test to identify the issue. Disconnect or remove the boot drive. Then boot your computer with a bootable USB drive (Windows installer). If the Info screen is persisted, it came from your BIOS settings. If the Info screen is disappeared, it was caused by multiple boot sector detected on your boot drive.
Use a different boot drive or wipe clean the current drive before installing OS will resolve your issue.
redxps630
9 Legend
9 Legend
•
11.5K Posts
0
August 29th, 2024 02:19
I actually have a 410 with bios 2.5.1. I had Win 7 installed on hdd. There was no extra screen between splash and Win 7 boot. My bios sata drives listed under sata 1 and sata 2 the dvd and hdd model under the drive details field.
you might want to check to make sure sata operation is RAID Autodetect/ATA and not RAID ON. There are only two options. My bios is set at first one.
I had replaced battery too.
It sounds like you did a clean Win 7 install. To most people deleting all old partitions is equivalent to wiping hdd.
I used my phone to take pictures and upload. No issue.
(edited)
redxps630
9 Legend
9 Legend
•
11.5K Posts
1
August 29th, 2024 02:25
Gchagen
1 Rookie
1 Rookie
•
20 Posts
1
August 29th, 2024 06:25
Thank you for the responses.
The drive was installed under RAID. The Dell literature for this model said that installing under RAID would give a little better performance than using Raid Autodetect/ATA -- that a single drive would actually operate either in AHCI mode or similar.
I have been a bit suspicious of the RAID mode as several of the things mentioned in the info' screen have to do with the HDD being in AHCI mode controlled by the RAID controller and giving the Intel Matrix Storage Manager Version.
If this weird screen is indeed an artifact of being run on RAID, I would expect the Dell literature to say something about it. Especially when back in the day of this model's youth mechanical HDDs were almost the only game in town and people were boasting about the methods they used to shave a few seconds off their boot time. A thirty second holdup would have been completely unacceptable.
I haven't activated Windows 7 yet, figuring that I might have to redo the whole thing. So, I might do an experiment where I completely wipe (overwrite) the drive and redo Windows still under RAID. If the screen is still there, I'll reinstall under RAID Autodetect/ATA. It doesn't really take that long and the project isn't time sensitive. I'll post the results here in case anyone else is curious.
I still don't know why my picture never showed. It's stored on this PC in the Pictures folder. I even got a green check mark that said it was uploaded and it showed on my post before I officially posted it.
Anyway, thanks for the input!
Grant
redxps630
9 Legend
9 Legend
•
11.5K Posts
0
August 29th, 2024 14:44
Funny that my other Dell also passes Dell logo screen quickly then sits on a blank screen with a single blinking underscore cursor indefinitely. I figured it out. It was a USB flash drive that it is scanning and reluctant to let it pass. As soon as I unplug the usb, Win 7 pro boot screen immediately appears. Lesson I learnt before and now is that extra screen with blinking cursor is pc is taking extra time to scan a “suspicious” device. Dell logo screen already passed so pc passed basic power on test of cpu, ram, hdd, motherboard but there is something else it is scanning before handing over to Windows. I had seen this delayed boot with a Dell multi card reader on a XPS 730X.
Regarding RAID I had seen extra info screen related to an add in RAID controller card in old pc. After I remove the card all was fast n good.
on this old model boot up one can do two things: further experiment with RAID and learn about old IDE/ATA (PATA) vs RAID (AHCI) or just be done with ATA and forget about RAID. I would be done with it if all I need is a fast Win 7 boot up to serve my purpose.
PS I test installed GTAV on a 410 updated w Q6600 quad cpu and gpu to test for gaming performance on old tech.
(edited)
Gchagen
1 Rookie
1 Rookie
•
20 Posts
0
August 30th, 2024 07:15
Well, the only way I could clear that info' screen was to reinstall under RAID Autodetect/ATA. The screen came up even with no boot drive available, so Windows was irrelevant to the problem.
There are also no other devices attached to the PC to cause issues. Not even an onboard card reader.
At least I started out this time with a nice, completely wiped drive. Like they say about chicken soup; it couldn't hurt.
It still makes no sense to me. Something must be missing, here. Some kind of setting or installation that would fix that issue. I can't believe that the info' screen is a normal and unavoidable consequence of installing a drive under RAID. It just doesn't fly that Dell would establish the RAID setting as the BIOS default and publish material that recommended this for improved HDD performance and then shrug off the consequent appearance of what seems to be a useless speed bump in the boot and reboot process. Users wouldn't stand for such a thing in a culture that puts such a heavy premium on faster and faster boot times.
I would be very interested to hear from a grey-haired and slightly grizzled IT Tech from back in the day with a more intimate knowledge of what worked how with these older Dell systems. I'm not going to lose sleep over this, but curiosity, like a three-year-old once awakened, is hard to get back to sleep again.
For the purposes of this inquiry, I'll give correct answer credit to redxps630.
Thanks again to all who bothered to respond!
Grant