XPS 8930, is a snail

The XPS 8930 is still a very viable machine.  With solid state drives, Windows boot and applications load times must be flying with satisfactory performances.

There must have been some incorrect settings and mistake with storage configurations.  If this recent upgrade is a paid service, you may want to express your dissatisfaction with the technician and requesting an overview of hardware setup to your preference.

If you must have resolving all issue by yourself, it will be a lot easier to set BIOS settings to match hardware setup, then performing a clean Windows installation.  Not only it will bring your system up-to-date, it will get rid of all old remnants issues, patches, and unwanted bloatware. 

It's about due time to give your system a new coin cell battery while you are working on it.

I also have an 8930 and upgraded to a 1TB SSD which was installed on the motherboard at the M.2 slot where the Optane memory used to be.  My Optane memory is out of the computer now.  My computer does not have any performance issues.

I assume that the OS is loaded and the 8930 is booting from the Samsung SSD

For NVMe M.2 SSD like your Samsung and my WD, it was advised here to change the controller from RAID to AHCI

Also, running Crystalmark (https://crystalmark.info/en/download/) and Why so slow (https://www.resplendence.com/whysoslow) may provide some clues.

@RetVetUSAF 

A couple of questions?

You said "technician took it upon himself to remove the Intel Optane Memory, which was original to the computer.". OK, so how much RAM do you have now? I assume the Optane Memory was in the 2nd M.2 Slot? Was it put back using a PCIe card or was different RAM using the traditional memory slots used? If 'normal' RAM was installed, having it too low could cause what you are seeing?

I would have assumed with Optane Memory, the Intel app would have been on the XPS originally?

You also said "did not complete the task as he did not set-up RAID.". Was the technician asked to do that? This is not a 'simple' task, especially if you wish to SAVE and KEEP the contents of the present C: drive SSD.

If you wish to do this, use the 2 SSD's in a RAID configuration, I suggest you Google "Switch from AHCI to RAID without reinstalling Windows" for some instructions on how to do this. For instance, there is this web page, https://gist.github.com/chenxiaolong/4beec93c464639a19ad82eeccc828c63, and this one as well, https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000124714/how-to-switch-from-ahci-to-raid-on-dell-data-security-windows-systems,

I do question why you'd want RAID? SSD's are normally fast, so any performance gain might not even be noticeable under normal usage. Yes, it does protect against a single SSD dying, but so would using back up s/w on the drive?

One thing to do is get some 'real' data. How SLOW is the SSD now? A program like Crystal Disk Mark (https://crystalmark.info/en/) can be run and get the speeds. That will help determine if it is the SSD or RAM that is causing your slowdown.

I have an 8940, and it came initially with RAID enabled in BIOS, but I only had one SSD and that slowed the SSD speeds down. Changing to AHCI improved the single SSD speed. I assume you have opened the BIOS and saw it was in AHCI, not RAID (NOTE: changing to RAID is not enough, see the links above).

Since you are not knowledgeable in computers, I'd stick with a single SSD for the OS and another for DATA and keep the SSD in AHCI mode if already set, or switch using instructions on how to do it  This Dell XPS Forum page should help you, https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/xps-desktops/xps-8940-added-hdd-change-to-ahci/647f9934f4ccf8a8dec79bbd?keyword=raid%20to%20ahci%20xps, but do it wrong, you could lose the contents of the SSD. Be SURE to make a BACK UP of it before proceeding. Google 'free backup software' (the one most people recommend, Macrium Reflect, is no longer officially available) and use it to save the C: contents. You will need an external drive possibly to do that if the new SSD is not available to use?

@ispalten​  Hello ispalten, to answer a few of your questions, I still have 16GB of RAM without the Intel Optane card. I don't know what slot the Optane was in, if I originally had RAID, or if the new SSD was installed there as I did not do the work. I don't know what the PCIe card is. The install date for the Intel Mem and Storage APP is in the time frame that the tech had the computer. It could be he had to reinstall it due to the removal of the Optane card. As stated in original post, I have only had a single drive from day one. Why wouldn't the first tech who replaced the original hard drive have removed the Optane if it is inoperable? I had NO problems with the system until Optane was removed.  Could the problem be BIOS related? There was an update shortly after I picked up the computer. I am taking it back to the technician today, so hopefully things will be resolved to my satisfaction. I went to the Crystalmark site to see what it was, and my computer said that it may harm my system. Thank you for your post!

Please give us specifics about your setup. You say you only had one drive so was that a hard disk drive (HDD)? If that HDD failed, did the tech install another HDD or an SSD? 

XPS 8930 only has one M.2 slot for an NVME SSD. So if tech installed a new M.2 NVME SSD to replace a failed HDD, the Optane would have had to be removed. An NVME SSD will give you better performance than HDD+Optane, so that would be a good upgrade.

Dell ships PCs with BIOS set to RAID, but many brands of NVME SSD don't work well that way. So BIOS needs to be set to AHCI. You just have to do this the right way:

1. Open Cmd prompt window, run as administrator.
2. Copy-paste this command, which will start Windows in Safe Mode the next time you reboot: bcdedit /set {current} safeboot minimal and press Enter
3. Restart the computer and enter BIOS setup by tapping F2 when you see the Dell screen.
4. Change the SATA Operation setting from RAID to AHCI.
5. Save the change and exit Setup. Windows will automatically boot in Safe Mode.
6. Open Cmd again, as in step #1.
7. Copy-paste this command, which will start Windows in Normal Mode the next time you reboot: bcdedit /deletevalue {current} safeboot and press Enter
8. Reboot and Windows will automatically start with AHCI drivers enabled.

Does that fix the performance issues?

@RetVetUSAF 

Well, 16GB's of RAM should be enough, that is not slow down the PC.

RAID requires 2 drives, and there are RAID variations of RAID types, and they can be configured with more than 2 drives even. However, Dell usually ships PC's with the BIOS set for RAID, which will slow down any single non-RAID PC's. The 'fix' is to change the BIOS setting to AHCI, and that increases speeds. Just search THIS forum for AHCI and you'll find many subjects with it.

I just checked, and Crystal Disk Mark page has no words that it would harm your system. Where did you see that? There is this warning though, "CrystalDiskMark may shorten SSD/USB Memory life.", and this is due to the fact that an SSD has a limited life. It is based on the number or disk accesses. However, the 'normal' like would for most people, be longer than you'd keep the PC. Read this page, https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/estimate-remaining-lifespan-ssd/, and another program on the Crytal site, CristalDiskInfo will calculate the life for you.

I actually think you saw the MS User Account Control pop-up Dialog box, which opens whenever you try to run a program under Administrator which it requires. Warns you it can make changes to your system. Nothing to worry about with that program. To measure the speed it does need Admin privileges and runs some stuff at low level.

For instance, my 8940, bought early in 2020, my C: is a 512G SSD:

It isn't EVEN close to having a problem.

A newer SSD put in earlier this year for a specific program to increase performance as it takes a long time to load and also access files during the use of the program (MS Flight Simulator 2020):

Being new, it shows 100% life.

PCIe is the backplane bus, where the video and other cards sit. If the Optane was left in, it uses the M.2 connector on the motherboard, and the PC only has 2 M.2 slots, there are 'adapter' cards that you can put M.2 devices in and use the PCIe slot but that method is slower than the M.2 connector on the motherboard. It might have been possible the place added the SSD to a card and put it on the PCIe bus, and that could explain the slowness. However, you sort of confirmed that is not the case... since the Optane Memory was removed, and I assume, the SSD went into that motherboard connection.

They might not have installed the Intel program... MS Update or even the Intel Driver and Support Assist could have done it (or they elected to update it when offered). That program ships with all XPS's I think, did on the ones I've had.

OP says it's an XPS 8930 which only has one M.2 NVME slot for an SSD. The other M.2 slot is only for a WiFi/BT card.

The Optane had to be removed if an M.2 NVME SSD was installed as the new boot drive. Or, perhaps the tech installed a 2.5" SATA SSD in a drive bay to replace a failing HDD boot drive? 

Either way, the Optane won't be needed. And if Optane was removed, and BIOS is still set to RAID, I suspect that's what could be causing slow performance...

That's why I asked for specifics about the OP's setup. Hard to troubleshoot without complete info. 

As @RoHe said, it would be great to know the inside layout as it stands now. Can you post a picture of the insides? Or do you have a description of the work done by the tech? 

Step 1 will be to change the controller from RAID to AHCI following the steps described in Ron's post.

@RoHe​ Hello RoHe, I did the BIOS check and found that the SATA was set to RAID. I performed the change to AHCI, but I am still experiencing the same problems. My DELL Supportassist tool took  1:21:15 to do a software update that should be three minutes! I am still having problems when running APPS. What did this guy do to my computer? As stated in my post, I originally had ONE HDD 512 GB which I later had to replace. This was with the San Disk Ultra 512GB SSD, which is what I just replaced with the current Samsung 870EVO 1TB SATA. All was OK, UNTIL the Intel Optane card was removed. I did a win+r look at the BIOS and it says UEFI.

@RetVetUSAF 

You didn't say initially, or at least I didn't read it that way, that the new SSD was a replacement for the old one?

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I recently replaced the hard drive in my XPS 8930 and the technician took it upon himself to remove the Intel Optane Memory, which was original to the computer. I had replaced the hard drive once before with a San Disk Ultra SSD 512GB and they did not touch the card. The newest drive is also an SSD- Samsung 870 EVO SSD 1TB.

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I read it originally as some time ago you replaced the old HD with an SSD recently. Then the newest drive, which I assumed and an added drive, not a replacement for the old replaced SSD.

So, the REPLACEMENT SSD was replaced with a NEW SSD, correct?

I think we need to know HOW you enabled the NEW REPLACEMENT SSD to contain what the OLD SSD had and made bootable?

Exactly where was this placed, M.2 slot or in a disk drive bay? Was the OLD SSD in the same position.

Also, please run the Crystal Disk program and provide the number (or a screen capture) it gets... need to know if the SSD is working OK or not?

Can you put the OPTANE memory back? See if that helps?

@RoHe​  RoHe, you ARE a Rockstar! I did the DISM and scannow tests as you requested, and my system is working GREAT (so far). Thank you very much for the great advice!

Yea!  - You're welcome.  Glad to have helped and to hear your PC is performing properly after a relatively easy fix!  

Strongly suggest you create a full backup image of the new SSD now and save it on an external (USB) drive. There are various imaging apps, free and paid, that will do the job.  Be sure to have whichever app you use to create the image also create the bootable USB stick you'd need to restore the image onto the internal SSD.

Remember, an image is only up-to-date on the day you created it, so get in the habit of creating a new image on a regular basis...