Installing fresh windows 10 on Dell XPS 13-issues!

[cozmodo]

Hi all,

I have a Dell XPS 13 and recently the original SSD which came with it was slightly water damaged and no longer works.

I bought a new SSD which seems to work on but I’m having troubles trying to install windows 10 via USB.

I think the problem might be that I’m trying to install it on a USB 3.0 port and this come up with an error message: “a media driver your computer needs is missing. This could be a dvd, usb or hard disk driver…”

It will then allow me to use a flash drive to try and instal the required drivers but I can’t seem to find out which ones I need!

I have put sata operation to AHCI bt this hasn’t helped either.

From searching online, it seems if you use a usb 2.0 drive it works fine but the XPS only has 3.0 drives.

Can anyone help me? Thanks. I have access to a different laptop if I need to download anything.

[Bruce]

another way to come at it may be to install this new SSD into that other laptop and install Win10 onto it that way.
then swap the drives back accordingly.
during the install, do not enter any Product Keys and have that second laptop off the web.
then when the SSD is put back into the XPS, the first startup will update the drivers due to the mobo change and activate Win10 with the MS servers.

just a thought…

[cozmodo]

Thanks for the reply. Because of the way XPS is, it is a M2 SSD not a regular one so I can’t use it in the other laptop (which is a hp business laptop).

I have also tried windows 7 but have the exact same issue.

[jmarket]

Was anything else “SLIGHTLY” water damaged?

[cozmodo]

A small amount of water (penny size amount) managed to get in the laptop, visible only in the area where the SSD touches the case. I dried it out fully (took it all apart, left in rice etc), when I tried to boot again it wouldn’t recognize the SSD anymore. I ran diagnostics in the BIOS and it seemed everything was ok apart from the SSD. So I bought a compatible one to replace and it picked the new SSD up in the BIOS, it just gets me to this bit during installation now…

[veeg]

Any updates for us?

[cozmodo]

Any updates for us?

So I tried downloading the Dell windows 10 copy and the os recovery tool. The windows 10 install had the same issue.

The os recovery tool seems to work fine until a point. I can select the option to reinstall critical drivers but when I go to start the installation it comes up with a message ‘unable to find USB’

I’ve tried searching online for that particular error message buy can’t find anything

[jmarket]

The water that got inside sounds like it corroded the electronic circuits inside the port. Water doesn’t damage circuits when there’s no power, but the battery was in, providing little trickles of power, which most likely fried something deep inside

[cozmodo]

I was thinking that but if I can boot from usb and it actually loads the windows install files, if it was corroded and didn’t work, surely I wouldn’t be able to get to this step?

Another idea I had, although not sure if it will work, if I make a copy of Windows on the USB and boot into that, is there any was I can then instal windows to the SSD? By coping the files across or something? If that makes sense

[cozmodo]

Hold the phone! Right, so on a whim I tried a different usb flash drive and it appears to be recovering properly using Dell os recovery! This is happening just now and if it works I will be SO happy. I will keep you guys posted (if anyone’s still interested in this)

[jmarket]

Please do keep us updated

[veeg]

Any updates?

[veeg]

Any updates? After 48 hrs this thread will be closed.