Hi all,
I just installed a Kingston V300 120 GB SSD in my e6540 as the primary drive. I left SATA set to RAID and installed Win 7 Pro x64. The install went fine and the system responded very quickly afterward - boot times so fast that the boot animation did not have a chance to finish. For fifty bucks I was thrilled.
However, during the Windows update process the computer rebooted several times and it eventually stopped at the "DELL" logo. A power cycle rebooted the OS with no trouble. After this happened a few more times I started troubleshooting.
So far I have...
1. Re-installed Windows 7 pro x64, even though the "hang-point" is when the Dell logo is still on the screen.
2. Switched SATA to ACHI and re-installed Windows 7 Pro x64.
3. Flashed latest E6540 BIOS update and re-installed Windows 7 Pro x64 with SATA set to ACHI.
None of these steps took care of the problem. I haven't had an issue with the OS up and running. Turning the laptop power off and then back on (by pressing the power button twice) usually resolves the issue. Sometimes I need to repeat the steps twice.
I would estimate the problem occurs about 25% of the time the OS is loading (cold or warm boots).
The hang screen is a black background with the white words Dell inside a white circle. If I wait at this screen usually it changes to an all-black screen with a flashing cursor in the top-left corner. Once the text "boot device not found" was displayed instead of nothing.
Questions:
1. Has anyone else seen or heard about this? If so, do you know what drive was used?
2. Can anyone here recommend a SSD with similar performance/size/price that has not exhibited this behavior after being used for a while?
3. Any other thoughts?
I plan to next try the drive out in a desktop computer to rule-out drive defects.
Thanks.