Question Can someone please help me? Dell is charging me $521 and $390 to fix something that is so small. I have a boot problem

[Marioraider18]

All I have is an issue with booting. I have an Alienware laptop. Basically I want to boot up from the M.2 SSD. In bios boot priority it doesn't list the M.2 SSD it only lists IPV4, IPV6, and Windows Boot Manager. The only way I can boot up from the M.2 SSD is if I do it manually in the UEFI settings. If I don't do that method then it attempts to boot up using the SSD and brings me to a screen to repair it. Any help please??

EDIT:

Okay it seems like I'm past the big hurdle of it not booting using M.2. Now I get something that says Checking Media Presence and then it boots. How do I get rid of that?

 

[RememberThe5th]

The issue moght lie down if you have 2 sperate drives with 2 seperate boot files on boot patrition.

 

[Marioraider18]

https://imgur.com/a/L1JjGYc

View: https://imgur.com/a/L1JjGYc


Does this help in any way? I don't know what I'm supposed to look for. I'm really new to this @RememberThe5th

 

[jsmithepa]

Fix what? what is broken? Are u suggesting your SSD been working fine and all of a sudden won't boot anymore (and you didn't do anything? fess up).

 

[erfattone]

disconnect the other drive, boot with the m.2 installed only. Then shut down the laptop, plug back the hd and see if it now boots from the m.2. Im not sure but i might set the m.2 as a default.

 

[Marioraider18]

Fix what? what is broken? Are u suggesting your SSD been working fine and all of a sudden won't boot anymore (and you didn't do anything? fess up).

Not sure if anything is broken. Here's the full story. I wanted to add an SSD to my alienware laptop and replace the 1tb HDD. So I took out the SSD from my old laptop and put it into this one. So now its just the M.2 SSD that is came with and the SSD I took out from the HP laptop. Everything works fine for a couple of months. I go to my pet for about an hour. When I return, I am at the Windows login screen. My pin doesn't work. It says I cannot login because I need an internet connection. I then hardwire Ethernet to my router and login that way. When logged in, either most of my files got deleted or got stored elsewhere on the drives. I no longer had the wifi driver installed. So I downloaded it.

At this same time that this happened I started getting a IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL blue screen error. I tried fixing it. Memory scans came back okay. I contacted Dell and they tried fixing the Blue screen issue. They told me I had 2 copes of Windows installed, 1 in each drive, the SSD and M.2 SSD. So then they told me to reformat my Windows and drives. So I deleted everything from the SSD. I Deleted everything from the M.2 SSD and installed a clean copy on it.

So here I am now... When I start up I get

https://imgur.com/a/FytKy1d

View: https://imgur.com/a/FytKy1d
this screen. Notice the bottom. It then leads me to here.

https://imgur.com/a/bNLbAoN

View: https://imgur.com/a/bNLbAoN
So its not booting properly. The only way for me to get into the desired boot drive is to manually select it on the screen below.

https://imgur.com/a/2Fl19e2

View: https://imgur.com/a/2Fl19e2
/\ Look at image #2 in this particular image album just above. Under the UEFI options I choose the HDD1 NVMe 256 Drive in order to MANUALLY boot the drive.

So how do I get THAT M.2 drive to start instead of leading me into the repair screen?

 

[Marioraider18]

disconnect the other drive, boot with the m.2 installed only. Then shut down the laptop, plug back the hd and see if it now boots from the m.2. Im not sure but i might set the m.2 as a default.

It does set it as default only if the SSD drive is taken out. If I take out the SSD drive it will correctly boot from the m.2. When I put the SSD back in, it attempts to boot from the SSD and ignores the m.2.

 

[jsmithepa]

It does set it as default only if the SSD drive is taken out. If I take out the SSD drive it will correctly boot from the m.2. When I put the SSD back in, it attempts to boot from the SSD and ignores the m.2.

This feels like a simple BOOT ORDER configuration thing, unless Dell hard-coded it that says will always boot SATA first if available, but to confirm that, you will have to consult the manual, but then u alluded this WORKED at some point and suddenly boom, don't know what to tell ya. A Dell specific forums, Dell owners may know better than we do.

Don't like that automatic repair screen, it suggests the system has detected corruption, typically with the boot drive. If u forced shut it down, that will cause this screen to appear.

 

[popatim]

Okay it seems like I'm past the big hurdle of it not booting using M.2. Now I get something that says Checking Media Presence and then it boots. How do I get rid of that?

Disable or remove booting over IPv4 & IPv6

 

[SkyNetRising]

So how do I get THAT M.2 drive to start instead of leading me into the repair screen?

Problem is because of 2 EFI system partitions on your drives. You need only one of those.
Delete all partitions from Disk 0. You'll have to use diskpart to delete 260MB EFI partition and 980MB recovery partition. Then create single large one partition occupying all of the drive (you can leave 10% unpartitioned for overprovisioning).
And disable boot from LAN (ipv4/ipv6).

I'm assuming 250GB drive is your M.2 (where windows is installed) and 500GB drive is your other SSD. If it's not, then to get windows onto 500GB drive, you need to disconnect 250GB drive and reinstall windows onto 500GB one.