Dell XPS 12 stalling when trying to boot from USB

p4rkourist

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Sep 16, 2014
12
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Hey guys, trying to boot from a FAT32 windows 10 USB drive, it is recognized in both UEFI and Legacy Boot Modes, I think because it's a windows 10 1703 is drive. But anyway the system stalls as soon as I boot to it, the windows logo pops up, the spinning dots loading animation comes up minutes later and then it just sits there and spins for ages.

I've tried messing with multiple Bios settings and have had no luck, thanks in advance if you have any wisdom, I'm simply trying to get a fresh copy of Windows 10 on it. Got it from a recycling pile at work and it seems to.
mostly be in good shape.
 

blockhead78

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Apr 7, 2011
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18,510
it can sometimes take a very long time to get past that screen

on some of the older PCs at work, it has sat on that screen for as long as an hour before continuing

what spec is the PC?
 

p4rkourist

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Sep 16, 2014
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4,560
It's a Dell XPS 12 9Q23, It's got an i7-3667u and 8GB of RAM, it isn't detecting a hard drive in the bios but that shouldn't stop me from being able to boot into the USB drive. Maybe I'll let it sit for a while and hope it just works, I am using a USB 3.0 drive and I don't see any option in the Bios for xHCI to enable USB 3.0 support before you're in the OS that might also have something to do with it.
 

p4rkourist

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Sep 16, 2014
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4,560


Huh, I'll try it tomorrow and update the thread.

 

p4rkourist

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Sep 16, 2014
12
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4,560
so I tried using an ubuntu USB drive to see if I could get into an OS at all and had a similar problem except I could see the readout of what was happening: acpi exception ae_aml_infinite_loop was continually popping up, from what I understand it is necessary to update the bios to resolve this issue, but dell only provides bios updates in the form of an executable.
 

p4rkourist

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Sep 16, 2014
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apparently this is a documented issue with the XPS 12 and I might be hosed, dell support hung up on me while instructing me to run the built in diagnostics, I wonder if anyone has any experience replacing the bios chips on these machines? I have experience soldering and am wondering if I should just do that, or do I have to get a whole new motherboard?