Elitedesk 800 G1 1798 boot error with 2nd ssd installed

[Flyinby]

Have been using this computer with a 256GB boot SSD drive and a couple of standard (spin) drives, and decided to eliminate the 2TB spinning drive and replace it with an SSD.  I cloned the existing drive and replaced it with the SSD.

Upon booting, I got a "-1798 Hard drive with hardware encryption enabled detected while in RAID mode.  Drives using hardware encryption should not be included in RAID volumes etc.  F1 to boot

I can easily hit F1 and it boots fine, but the problem is if there's a power failure, Windows update, etc., and I'm away, that takes the computer offline if I'm not there to hit F1.  I'd love to just disable the warning, as I'm not using RAID arrays, that's just the default setting that the computer came with.  Anyone know of a way to do that?

I did find an old post on an HP board that suggested switching the emulation in bios settings to IDE, rather than RAID + AHCI, which I tried but then Windows failed to boot; rather than attempt any "repair" that may corrupt everything, I reset it to RAID and fortunately was able to get back to Windows.

I did a search on Crucial drives and could find no way to completely disable the hardware encryption ability.  I'm not thrilled at the idea of imaging all of my drives (boot, 3TB and 4TB), resetting the emulation in BIOS, and then restoring everything in that mode, hoping all goes well.  The SSD is still returnable, and I may do that, but then what do I replace it with?  A google search on ssd without hardware encryption produces nothing useful, so the next SSD may do the same thing.

Disabling that warning from BIOS would be the ideal solution, if anyone knows of a setting in there somewhere, or alternatively a 2TB SSD that doesn't produce that warning, or any other ideas short of going back to the spinning drive or redoing all of the drives with bios in IDE mode.  Thanks in advance for suggestions or links to info.

[itsmyname]

@Flyinby -- Your BIOS settings should allow IDE versus AHCI versus RAID+AHCI, not just the two options you mentioned. 

Which device has the hardware encryption enabled?

It is that device that you need to backup everything to an external disk-drive.

Then, carefully use the DISKPART command-line utility:

DISKPART> help clean

Removes any and all partition or volume formatting from the disk with focus.

Syntax: CLEAN [ALL]

ALL Specifies that each and every byte\sector on the disk is set to zero, which completely deletes all data contained on the disk.

On master boot record (MBR) disks, only the MBR partitioning information and hidden sector information are overwritten.

On GUID partition table (GPT) disks, the GPT partitioning information, including the Protective MBR, is overwritten.

If the ALL parameter is not used, the first 1MB and the last 1MB of the disk are zeroed.

This erases any disk formatting that had been previously applied to the disk.

The disk's state after cleaning the disk is 'UNINITIALIZED'.

That should remove any "encryption" attribute, by setting the drive to "uninitialized".

[Flyinby · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your detailed reply, which sounds like it may work if it will disable hardware encryption completely in the SSD, but before trying it I tried modifying my search to "change bios from RAID to AHCI Windows 10" and found a good solution that didn't require erasing or imaging/reinstalling, and eliminates the RAID/hardware encryption warning.

To clarify, 800 G1 came from the refurbisher with the emulation mode in bios set to RAID (which makes no sense to me, and I'd never have used that option since it's not a RAID setup and never will be).  Also, the add-on 2TB SSD was NOT encrypted, it simply comes, as many do, with the ability to hardware encrypt if you should want that option.  None of my drives were encrypted; if they had been, it would be necessary to have a hard copy of the encryption key before doing any of this, in order to enter safe mode on Windows.

1. From Windows 10 or the sign-in screen, choose Power...and holding down the shift key, Restart.  The computer will do a soft reboot to the option screen.

2. On the option screen, select troubleshoot...advanced  options...startup settings...restart

3.After it restarts, select safe mode or safe mode with networking, in case it needs to download a driver for AHCI.  Read the next line before doing this!

4.  As soon as it shuts down to a blank screen, start tapping the F10 (most HP) or whatever key your computer uses to enter the bios/EFI setup screen...keep tapping every second or so until the setup screen appears.

5.  Now go into your storage settings and change the emulation mode from RAID or RAID+AHCI to AHCI, be sure to save the changes and exit.  The computer then should reboot to safe mode.  I'd suggest waiting a minute or so for Windows to load the AHCI drivers, then go ahead and reboot normally.

6.  Nothing to do here except log in to Windows without having to bypass the "press F1 to boot" error warning any more.

I'm not sure why this computer came from the refurbisher with RAID mode enabled, rather than IDE or AHCI.  Perhaps that's the default setting, but for anyone using one of the many SSD's as a secondary drive that allows hardware encryption, it's a difficult solution to find, and there's a lot of misinformation around, such as requiring a complete reinstall of Windows.  I could find nothing on Crucial's site about it, and earlier posts about the problem on this and other forums were outdated.  Hope this easy solution is of help to others who tire of the "1798 Error - press F1 to boot" message.

[itsmyname]

@Flyinby -- I'm not sure why this computer came from the refurbisher with RAID mode enabled, rather than IDE or AHCI. 

Setting it to "RAID" allows the new owner to work with just one disk-drive, and NO "RAID sets", and it allows the new owner to assign multiple disk-drives into one "RAID set".

On most motherboards, there is additional circuitry to do the RAID.

Remember the old "IDE" based motherboards? Most of them had two channels, with a maximum of two drives per channel. But, some of them only had one channel, to allow one disk-drive and one CD drive to co-exist on that one channel.  Similarly, a modern motherboard has built-in AHCI circuitry, and built-in RAID circuitry -- two separate "channels".

[Flyinby]

Yes, I remember the old master/slave jumpers and flat ribbon cables, and even having to enter the hard drive parameters in the bios for it to be recognized...don't miss any of that though 8^)

Since the computer is a few years old, it probably made sense to have RAID enabled just-in-case, and, at that time, to provide a warning if a hardware-encryption capable drive was installed, in the event they were planning to use a RAID array.  I had originally added a couple of larger, spinning drives without any problem, but the Crucial 2TB I replaced one with had hardware encryption enabled (not necessarily used, just capable, and no apparent way to eliminate that capability), and apparently that's quite common with SSD drives now, as it's a much better system for those who need encryption.

The only real problem with the RAID setting was the warning that required F1 to continue booting, and I suppose they could fix that with firmware, but not expecting that on an older machine.  Now that I know the way to get around it without reinstalling Windows, it's not much of an issue.

Thanks for your input and help.