After weeks of trying on and off to upgrade one of the Dell Precision T3600 computers in our office from Windows 7 to Windows 10, I finally found the problem and solution.
The cause was difficult to find, but I finally found people complaining about it (and saying that Dell customer service was of no help), and one person had a solution that finally made sense.
The problem lies in the raid controller that Dell uses for the hard drives. Windows 10 doesn’t have the drivers for this controller by default, so the installation process fails and generates a vague error on the first reboot.
I have 2 hard drives connected to the raid controller in mirror raid 0. The solution involved disabling raid in bios, disconnecting both hard drives, connecting one to the SATA controller, and installing windows that way, enabling the raid, install drivers, reconnect hard drives to raid controller.
- Reboot
- Press F12 to enter Bios
- in the BIOS, I disabled the SATA/RAID operation setting
- Shutdown
- Disconnect both hard drives from raid controller
- Connect one hard drive to SATA0 port (currently connected to DVD)
- Start up computer
- Start Windows 10 upgrade
- Let Windows 10 install properly
- Reboot
- Press F12 to enter Bios
- Change the SATA/RAID setting to “Enable”.
- Reboot. Windows 10 will start up, but it may take longer than it used to.
- Download and Install http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=JV4JN&fileId=3298242773&osCode=W764&productCode=precision-t3600&languageCode=en&categoryId=SG
File Name:DRVR_AHCI_SCU_Intel_A03_JV4JN_f6flpy-setup_ZPE.exe - Driver files can be found in c:\dell\drivers\JV4JN
- Go to Device Manager. There will be a new entry, SAS Controller, but has no driver.
- Tell Device Manager that you want to install a driver. Tell it that the driver is on your computer. Point to the JV4JN folder. Select the RSTe_f6_iaStorS_win8_64 subfolder. After successful install, the Storage Controller entry in Device Manager will now have a new sub-entry for the SAS/RAID controller.After the driver is installed, shut down the computer.
- Move the hard drive to the HDD0 port
- Move the DVD drive to the SATA0 port.
- Startup Windows and let it initialize itself completely
- Shut down
- Connect the second hard drive to HDD1 port
- Startup, and press key combination to enter raid setup on startup
- Exit with default settings and reboot
- Wait while windows starts up and it will take a while to initialize itself.
These steps worked well. The forum post is copied below as reference in case that ever disappears. https://www.dell.com/support/home/bb/en/bbdhs1/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=4JGTT Download drivers