Hello ppl!
I am new here, so forgive me in advance for any misconceptions. I have done my research for my problem, but to no avail.
I have a DELL XPS L702x, from which I have been really satisfied, since it supported my mild gaming and 3d modelling well the past years. I decided to give "him" some extra life by replacing the old HDD (1 of 2, with the original OS having been upgraded to WIN10, with no problems) with a new Samsung Evo 500GB. I laso did an internal cleaning, and thermal paste renewal, since the opportunity presented itself. So I installed the SSD on the slot of the old primary HDD. Bios saw it fine, so I inserted the USB which I had used for the Windows Installation Program, supplied by Microsoft. The installation begun, but the "cant locate a partition" message appeared. I did the "diskpart" , with and without the alignment and long format, to no avail. Googling my problem, I got a glimpse of a problem with the 3.0 USB, so I thought "let's give it a try" and actually it worked! Hurray!
But, after copying the files to the SSD, the windows installer had to reboot. After rebooting, here we go again with the installation. I did it again, I formatted again, I changed the boot sequence, I removed the USB, no progress whatsoever. After careful examination, with the USB removed, I saw that the BIOS had a "Removable device" boot sequence option, so I hit and, miracle!, it resumed the installation. Entering windows, I see that the second HDD does not appear. But the device manager recognizes it, so I enter Disk management, and just by assigning it a letter, everything is fixed and I get my second HDD working as normal (just for back up purposes, no OS installed there). After some upgrades done by windows and Nvidia, I reboot, only to find out that after the DELL logo, all i get is a blank screen with the old dos cursor blinking (Just like when not having an OS installed). I change again the sequence and opting for the removable device, and again it enters windows. After some research, I upgrade my Bios from A14 to 19 and perform an Intell Matrix something installation, since Dell does not support this laptop on win10 anymore.
And here I am stuck, as each time I open my laptop I have to change the boot sequence for the pc to login to windows. If I set the removable device as 1st option in default boot sequence, nothing happens, so I have to do it manually.
The BIOS sees the SSD, the HDD, and a removable device. I should have seen it earlier, but in WIN10 installation, it presented me with two separate, but identical options like this: "Install windows 10 on volume 1" and "Install windows 10 on volume 1",. I believe this is related to the BIOS issue.
I am currently thinking to perform a win7 clean install, so that Dell autodetects and installs the current drivers for the hardware, then upgrade to win10. But I dont think this will provide any solution to the BIOS issue. The SATA options are AHCI and ATA. I swapped between these 2, but nothing changed. I dont know if it is due to the hot-swapping ability of the AHCI, but even if it is, I dont know how to disable it. Even if I do disable it, the system does not boot from the HD (SSD) in any case, even though it is the same hardware actually, sine I have unplugged the USB long ago, and the HDD hasnt any OS installed. No DVDs/Blue rays placed there either.
I thank you in advance for your support and ideas and apologize for my english, but it is not my native language.
Best regards