XPS 8930, slow boot

When was last time you replaced the motherboard battery and cleared BIOS?  I'd do that before making any other changes...

1. Power off, unplug power cord from rear of PC
2. Press/hold power button for ~15 sec
3. Open case and remove motherboard battery (check Service Manual for details)
4. Press/hold power button for ~30 sec
5. Install fresh CR2032 3-volt coin cell battery (~$2)
6. Close up and connect mouse, monitor and keyboard
7. Reboot

If that doesn't help, reboot and tap F12 when you see the Dell splash screen. When the menu opens, select option to run Diagnostics and run all of them. Copy/post error messages, if any...

If it 'takes several minutes to boot up' that typically means that some third-party app or apps is causing the slowdown. Here's how to check: Start the computer in Safe Mode.

In Safe Mode, no third-party apps or drivers start. If your computer is not slow to boot into Safe Mode, then a third-part app or driver may be the culprit.

In addition, something all of us need to consider these days is the possibility that malware is using up your computer's resources.

A suggestion was provided last September to resolve this issue  https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/xps-desktops/xps-8930-ssd-upgrade-failure/651509779a4a910093823a4d

Just toss away both of the HDD and Optane memory.  Put an NVMe SSD into the M.2 slot and perform a clean Windows installation.  That should bring your PC performance to better than new. 

@Chino de Oro​ I am something of a novice in these matters I guess I do not fully understand the nature of Intel Optane memory but if I "toss away" the Optane memory module what do I use for RAM?

Optane memory in the M.2 slot was used as storage cache to help with the hard drive performance.  It is not the same as system RAM, which are located in the DIMM slots.

Your system was purchased in January 2018, after 6 years of usages, your hard drive would developing failure and will crash eventually.  Replacing the hard drive with a modern NVMe SSD can improve the performance up to x20 times faster.  The Optane will not be needed and by removing it, the M.2 slot can be used for a new NVMe SSD.

Hence the reason it was offered as solution back then and again, now.  Replacing your boot drive with a new NVMe SSD will solve the slowness problem and will improve the overall performance way better than when using it with a hard drive.

I'd still change the battery first, if nothing else than to rule it out for only a few bucks. 

If the battery died, BIOS could have reverted to AHCI, which is the default setting for SATA Operation.  Dell ships PCs with BIOS SATA Operation and Windows configured to use RAID. So a change to AHCI could cause slow/delayed booting.  

If nothing else, reboot and start tapping F2 when you see the Dell splash screen to open BIOS setup. Navigate to the SATA Operation setting and see if it's set to RAID or AHCI, but do not change that setting. Just exit BIOS setup without making any changes and tell us how it's set....

@oreades,

Why not use a standard 'cheap' SSD? No need a M.2 one?

A 2.5 inch will fit with an adapter into a drive cage. Depending on the screw holes and the drive cage, since you'll not be moving a tower much you could even just screw one onto the drive and cage.

1TB's are under $100 mostly too. Almost every where has them at or below that price (some are better performing that others though and generally are highest priced).

@ispalten​ I'm not an expert, but I believe the older 2.5 SSD drives are way slower than the M.2 drives

@mrglwatson

Yes, they generally are faster, but compared to what I assume you now have, a mechanical drive​, the improvement should be substantial in speed of booting and loading with either one.

One good thing in your case, no need to remove the Optane memory.

Crucial 2T NVME SSD (Reads/writes up to 7,400/7,000MB/s, PCIe 4.0 NVMe, M.2 2280) that's compatible with the XPS 8930 is ~$120. 

Crucial 2.5" 2T SATA SSD (SATA 6.0Gb/s, 560 MB/s Read, 510 MB/s Write) that's compatible with XPS 8930 is also ~$120.

XPS 8930 only has PCIe 3.0, so this SSD, while compatible, won't get those R/W speeds, but it's still going to be ~5-6+ times faster than the SATA SSD for same amount of storage at about the same price. 

EDIT: I used Crucial drives for this comparison, but that doesn't rule out SSDs from other brand name OEMs, eg, Samsung, Western Digital, for prices and compatibility...

@RoHe​ Actually I had the HDD @ motherboard replaced by Dell under extended warranty ~ 2 years ago. The technician said nothing about a battery so I don't know if it was replaced or he just used the old one but the HDD is relatively recent.

@RoHe​,

I took into account not losing the Optane memory, and additionally, the heat source it would be compared to a 2.5 inch in a cage that generally doesn't not add heat significantly. To me, disk speed is not always a factor in performance. Not all use of a computer requires disk activity. Booting, and some heavy disk intensive operations do, but for the most part, they are idle. Some of those speeds listed for my M.2 WDC SN530 I've never even got close to when I tested it (on an 8940 and had to change the BIOS as well off of RAID as well).

With all due respect to the wise helpers here, I think it's more efficient to eliminate software as the root cause first, before looking to replace hardware.

And keep in mind please that a hardware component doesn't exist in a vacuum - when considering new hardware you need to determine whether the rest of your system supports the capabilities of new hardware.

@Chino de Oro​ My 8930 runs Windows 10 and I am told I cannot upgrade to Win 11 (no TDM 2.0 found) Can I just install Win 10 on the new SSD or will this not work?

The 8930 supports Windows 11.  See Dell support site for Win 11 drivers.  You can, however, installing the operating system of your preference as some users do not quite like Win 11 interface.  Either OS will work on your new SSD.