Have just bought my first batch of Dell Latitude E4310 laptops (25 of them). Have created our standard enterprise desktop using Windows XP Pro SP3 with all the latest drivers from Dell for this model of laptop. The laptops BIOS setting for hard drive mode is set to ATA (the only mode that will work with Windows XP).
The image has been deployed to all 25 laptops using Symantec Ghost in exactly the same way as every other PC/laptop in our organisation (around 500 in total). However, these 25 laptops are all exhibiting the same intermittent fault. On first powering on, a message is displayed saying "No Boot Device Found. Press any key to reboot the machine". If the machine is rebooted, it usually starts up fine. The error only happens intermittently, and only around 10% of the time.
Any help would be much appreciated. Dell's response is "install Windows 7", which isn't particularly helpful as we only support Windows XP Pro at the moment!
Many thanks
Paul
The issue seems to be that basically this model of laptop does not like running WinXP with the HDD set to ATA mode. I don't know if the same BIOS options are available if you've got SSD's, but with a HDD the only way to install XP from the standard WinXP CD is to use ATA mode.
I managed to resolve the issue by setting the HDD mode back to the default "RAID on" mode, and installing WinXP by pressing F6 at the start of the XP install process and loading the correct (Dell) drivers for the HDD before the OS is installed. An alternative method (the actual way I eventually did it) was to slipstream these drivers into the XP install CD.
Apparently, once XP is installed with the HDD in ATA mode, it's not possible to retrospectively install the drivers for the default "RAID on" mode, so you would need to do a new image from scratch.
Not sure how much of this is relevant to you with SSD's but let me know if you have any questions.
Cheers
Paul