It is possible that you might be having problems with your hard drive drivers. Here is: • First Load BIOS to Default • Confirm RAID is ON under Sata Controllers • Proceed with OSRI • Once in the partition table Page, if the drive is still not visible, Remove teh OS CD and insert the Drivers adn resources DVD sent from Dell. • Click on Load Drivers- this will take about few seconds and detect the Intel Controller Driver. Select and Click Next. • Now it should show the Drives available and you should be able to proceed with completion of OS installation.

I had a similar problem with my Dell laptop while making a clean installation myself. I have just managed to get rid of Windows 8 and installing Windows 7 in my laptop. I hope this helps: 1) Preparing 1.1) Download all required Windows 7 (64 bits) drivers from DELL (). The SATA driver (Serial-ATA_Driver_VWCH1_WN_11.6.0.1030_A02.EXE) is needed while installing Windows. The rest (see the list in Section 3) will be needed after installing Windows. 1.2) Execute “Serial-ATA_Driver_VWCH1_WN_11.6.0.1030_A02.EXE” and select the option that allows to extract the contents of the package without installing the drivers. 1.3) Save the resulting files into a flash memory device, within a folder named “Serial-ATA_Driver_VWCH1_WN_11.6.0.1030_A02” (for example).

I have a Dell Inspiron 15 (3878) running Win10 with a Toshiba 160GB hdd. The problem started with the laptop constantly shutting down after restarting from a recent update. I decided to format and doa.

NOTE: An alternate method (more complex and with few advantages) is making a bootable DVD from the original Windows installation disk for including the SATA drivers. This is explained in “Tutorial: How to clean install Windows on Inspiron 17R SE” (forum.notebookreview.com/dell-inspiron-dell-studio/686824-tutorial-how-clean-install-windows-inspiron-17r-se.html). Instead of using 'Ultraiso' (the evaluation license cannot work with Windows DVD because it contains files greater than 300 MB), 'Imgburn' (www.imgburn.com/) can be used for making the bootable image. See “How to create a Windows Vista / 7 installation disc (bootable) using ImgBurn” (forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=11194). 2) Installing Windows 2.1) Plug the flash memory device (including DELL Inspiron SATA drivers) and insert Windows 7 installation DVD. 2.2) Reboot the laptop, press F12 (Boot Options), change the UEFI boot mode to Legacy (Secure boot: OFF) and boot from the DVD.

Windows installation process should start. 2.3) After selecting Windows installation language and accepting the license terms, select 'Custom (advanced)' installation type. Then the list of available disks and partitions will appear (not all of them will be shown because a proper SATA driver is missing). So: 2.4) Click on 'Load Driver', click 'Browse' and select 'Removable Disk' (the flash memory device). Then select the directory 'Serial-ATA_Driver_VWCH1_WN_11.6.0.1030_A02 f6flpy-x64 f6flpy-x64'. The complete list of partitions should appear after installing the driver.

Notes: If the installation of the SATA driver fails, retry. Sapphire fox shifting roommates page 12. It is also possible to have unexpected blue screen errors for 'iaStor.sys' (address FFFFF880030A043B) when Windows is about to automatically restart, but they can be ignored (seemingly).

These problems occurred to me only when using the alternate method (making a bootable DVD including the SATA drivers). 2.5) Select a partition and continue installing Windows normally. Note: Delete the existing partitions and create a new one if the installation complains about 'GPT style' partitions. 3) Installing the rest of drivers When Windows 7 is completely installed, this should be the situation in the Device Manager: When preparing (see Section 1), the following drivers for Windows 7 should have been downloaded from www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/Product/inspiron-17r-se-7720.

Dell's mainstream Inspiron lineup tries to strike a good balance between performance and price, but the Inspiron 15 3000 falters in that goal. To get this machine's price down to only $329 (it starts at $299), Dell understandably had to make compromises, but too many of them are deal breakers.The 15-inch laptop suffers from mediocre performance, a dim display and an uncomfortable keyboard, but it does have fairly strong battery life and decent build quality. Competitors in this price range offer more. Specs Design The Inspiron 15 3000's design has an interesting texture but a boring color scheme.