DELL XPS 9520 No 3rd party SSDs?

[abajor]

So we have a DELL XPS 9520 a woman broke her screen and needed an immediate replacement so we removed bitlocker and put her Drive in an Asus TUF gaming laptop, everything is hunky dory.
We happen to have another DELL XPS 9500 screen that is compatible with the 9520, so tried installing new SSD's and doing a clean windows 11 install.
During formatting the installer can't find the Intel drivers for the nvme controller?

I spend a long time figuring out how to extract the drivers from the official dell installer downloads tried different versions, was able to load the drivers in the windows 11 installer; however, was unable to detect Samsung 980 Pro or Crucial P3.
Has Dell decided they want to be the new king of walled gardens and proprietary ecosystems?

This is really lame. And to buy an official DELL 2TB m.2 drive for the model it's been specified for Dell charges like 450$ !?
What the Hell?

I've noticed companies like HP using SSD which can only be seen in HP computers and not in anything else as well, but at least we can change theirs with a 3rd party.

Is this going to be the new normal?

Big integrators locking out 3rd party sourced components in favor of often times inferior components, with exclusive serial numbers?

[mon2]

See lots of threads on the internet with discussion of this laptop and the use of various SSDs. Perhaps review those but do confirm if they have compatibility with Windows 11. The combination works with Windows 10? If not, something else wrong with the laptop?

Do confirm the bios is not restricting the use of this new hardware.That was a new trend started a few years ago. Disable the setting that blocks the use of new hardware and test again. We manufacture add on hardware and many have phoned in with this fault.

[abajor]

It's a 2022 I don't think you can even buy it with Windows 10 if you wanted to.

We have disabled all of the security features on the board but it boots up saying secure with Dell Safe Bios or some thing like that.

I followed other peoples tutorials on how to extract the intel highspeed storage drivers from the Dell install packs using 7zip, and loading drivers from a second USB drive during win11 install.

It doesn't work at least not on the 2022 XPS 9520.

After a long conversation with the Dell Service Rep they said even their Dell Hard drives aren't cross compatible with all models, which just sounds like lunacy to me.

But they're the company selling new MAGICAL Dell branded 2TB SSD for 460$ directly from their website..

[mon2]

Locate Secure Boot in the bios and disable it. Save and exit to try again.

https://www.daossoft.com/bios-tips/h...s-on-dell.html

[abajor]

Locate Secure Boot in the bios and disable it. Save and exit to try again.

https://www.daossoft.com/bios-tips/h...s-on-dell.html

It was disabled, Even set to factory defaults.

[reformatt]

Are you using a stock Windows installer or the Dell recovery image? For a stock image, failure to see the SSD is usually solved by downloading the Intel RST drivers, extracting to USB, and when you get to the select disk part of setup, select Load Driver and point it the folder on the USB where the inf files are. Possibly need the Serial I/O drivers as well.

Other alternative is to create a recovery installer, as drivers etc are all built in.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en...verytool/w2021

Curious to see if Dell truly have some compatibility issues in this area.

[abajor]

Are you using a stock Windows installer or the Dell recovery image? For a stock image, failure to see the SSD is usually solved by downloading the Intel RST drivers, extracting to USB, and when you get to the select disk part of setup, select Load Driver and point it the folder on the USB where the inf files are. Possibly need the Serial I/O drivers as well.

Other alternative is to create a recovery installer, as drivers etc are all built in.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en...verytool/w2021

Curious to see if Dell truly have some compatibility issues in this area.

I will try that. We can't see the drives in the BIOS either.

[abajor]

Are you using a stock Windows installer or the Dell recovery image? For a stock image, failure to see the SSD is usually solved by downloading the Intel RST drivers, extracting to USB, and when you get to the select disk part of setup, select Load Driver and point it the folder on the USB where the inf files are. Possibly need the Serial I/O drivers as well.

Other alternative is to create a recovery installer, as drivers etc are all built in.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en...verytool/w2021

Curious to see if Dell truly have some compatibility issues in this area.

Thanks for that recovery tool that allowed me to install.

So Dell isn't locking out 3rd party drives, just making it more difficult. Another issue is the factory reset the Dell Service rep told us to use disabled the NVME slots, so we spun our wheels for a little bit after that.

Dell service does have a problem however. They actually lied to us and told us this https://www.dell.com/support/home/en...verytool/w2021 didn't exist even though we asked specifically for their recovery installer.
He also told us that there were only specific sku's of drives that work for the xps we must purchase through dell by looking up the service tag number.

I've noticed some interesting unethical behavior coming from the Dell phone support people like they are going to send us a bill for our out of warranty phone call; however, if I just ignore it and continue talking to them they continue to answer questions and try and steer me into sending the machine in.
Its pretty wild when they tell you to go look at the available components on their website and they are selling 2TB nvme for 440$ or 4TB for 900$ and they do their best to convince you that is the only compatible hardware.

[reformatt]

Well that's good to hear. I was a bit concerned with the CAMM memory that Dell was producing. Sounded they were getting very Apple like at the time but I believe it's an open standard.

Recovery installers for any manufacturer machine are a good sanity check. Especially when you are trying to establish whether you have a hardware fault, or a software/driver configuration problem. HP, Lenovo and Dell all have these available.

Phone support (from any manufacturer, not just Dell) I only use for getting a RMA number. These people are not troubleshooters, they are what they call Level 1 support in the IT field. They are there to wade through all the simple stuff (is it switched on, have tried restarting, have you updated drivers etc) and have little to no real product experience. If they cannot solve, they are supposed to escalate it up to someone in a higher pay grade. Then if that level can't, it goes up to the most senior level where they are on the most bucks.

Actually I've had good dealings with Dell to be honest. They are the only ones to do motherboard exchanges if the model is recent enough, which is usually half the price of a full replacement. You just have to make sure to let them know they are dealing with someone who actually fixes this stuff so you can bypass all the have you tried this type questions. I usually do all this on Live Chat, not via phone.