Question cloned W10 from HDD to SSD. Now I have to boot manually as boot manager not working

[NJTH317]

I just purchased a Dell Inspiron 5570 with a 128GB SSD, and a 1TB HDD. Oddly, Dell put Windows 10 on the HDD. “No problem” I thought, "I’ll just clone the HDD to the SSD (EaseUS - worked great).
However, when I rebooted, it took me to the Automatic Repair section. Nothing there worked - kept cycling back. So I went into the UEFI. The Windows Boot Manager was listed, and below it the SSD. I had to arrow down and click manually on the SSD to get the system to boot to W10 on the SSD. This works every time. It seems like the boot manager is not working - if I click on it in the UEFI it just cycles back to the Dell logo over and over again.

I have not removed W10 from the HDD, though I did move all the files into one separate file (I think I called it Old W10 HDD file) so as not to get confused. I’m afraid that might have screwed stuff up - and I can’t seem to move those files out of the holding file back to their original location.

Anyway - I just want to get the laptop to boot automatically to the SSD (after all, the main reason to move it was to speed up boot time!).

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

 

[cdrkf]

I just purchased a Dell Inspiron 5570 with a 128GB SSD, and a 1TB HDD. Oddly, Dell put Windows 10 on the HDD. “No problem” I thought, "I’ll just clone the HDD to the SSD (EaseUS - worked great).
However, when I rebooted, it took me to the Automatic Repair section. Nothing there worked - kept cycling back. So I went into the UEFI. The Windows Boot Manager was listed, and below it the SSD. I had to arrow down and click manually on the SSD to get the system to boot to W10 on the SSD. This works every time. It seems like the boot manager is not working - if I click on it in the UEFI it just cycles back to the Dell logo over and over again.

I have not removed W10 from the HDD, though I did move all the files into one separate file (I think I called it Old W10 HDD file) so as not to get confused. I’m afraid that might have screwed stuff up - and I can’t seem to move those files out of the holding file back to their original location.

Anyway - I just want to get the laptop to boot automatically to the SSD (after all, the main reason to move it was to speed up boot time!).

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

I've had similar issues with a Dell Laptop (an old XPS 15)... the problem is Dell modify the boot manager to include some Dell specific diagnostic tools and so on, so the standard 'migrate to SSD' function offered in various tools won't transfer everything correctly.

I used AOMEI partition assistant to transfer it. The first time I did a standard migration from the old HDD to the new SSD and it wouldn't boot at all (I was removing the old drive entirely, I think you can still boot as the HDD is still in the machine). In the end I found that instead of doing a full migration, I changed the settings in AOMEI to copy the various hidden Dell partitions exactly as they were on the HDD (not ideal for best performance of the SSD)- it then worked fine.

I'm not familiar with EaseUS so unsure if it has options to do this, here is a link to AOMEI though:
https://www.disk-partition.com/free-partition-manager.html

Hope that helps!

 

[Prostar Computer]

As long as you don't have data you need saved to either drive yet, I would start fresh with either the factory restore (point it to the SSD, if it allows) or reinstall from scratch. You can get Win 10 from Microsoft, the bigger pain will be downloading and installing the drivers.

If you go the latter route (clean install), consider physically removing the HDD (unless it risks your warranty and/or you don't feel comfortable doing so); Windows has a habit of spreading partitions across 2 disks if available.

 

[NJTH317]

Thanks so much, both of you. My thought was to go back to the HDD and re-think it all. But the HDD doesn't show in In the UEFI after the transfer, there's only the boot manager and the SSD. The HDD does show that blue W10 logo on it in the "this computer," however. That's obviously a problem. As I said, i moved the visible files on the HHD to an archive file I created. I'm now in the process of restoring those files to their original location. I'm hoping this will allow me to boot to the HDD.

I'm nervous about the fresh install, in part because the W10 download page asks for a license, and directs me to Dell. The license info isn't listed anywhere on the material from Dell.

Any other suggestions greatly appreciated! I'll keep you updated.

 

[NJTH317]

Following up on my last post. Once I restored the HDD windows files I'd moved back to their original place, the system rebooted perfectly to the HDD (though slowly). In "This Computer" the blue W10 logo had switched back to the HDD. I'm now running a PowerShell check, as the W10 start menu is not there. I'll then run "ISM /Online /Cleanup-image /RestoredHealth", which hopefully will fix any files I corrupted with all my switching back-and-forth.

Next question(!): Dell has a page that says "how to enable boot from DVD Option with UEFI Boot Mode Enabled" - I'm not clear if this is an option to change the boot routine permanently by using this method but identifying the SSD instead of the DVD, or simply as a one-time option, only from UEFI. It seems to me that if this works, I can point the boot sequence to the SSD and leave the original copy of W10 on the HDD as a backup.

Any thoughts about that?

 

[NJTH317]

Third post's a charm! It was as simple as going into the UEFI interface, moving down to the boot sequence, and moving the SSD above the Windows Boot Manager! Now it boots up super-fast directly to the SSD. Added plus is that the Windows Start now works fine. And if I need for any reason to boot to the HDD and can do so manually in the UEFI interface. Boy, did I luck out on this one! Thanks for your help, guys!