Alienware 17 R4 will not save boot settings in BIOS after motherboard change

My motherboard was swapped out (under warranty) and all seems to work but the boot order does not have the SSD first, and that's causing a significant slow-down in boot up. I can change it in the BIOS settings, but it always goes back to the original. In other words, the changes are not really saved. I have made a couple of other changes in the BIOS setup to see if they changed or reverted back, and they stayed to whatever I set them. So, I assume the battery is good since those changes were retained. So, why won't the boot order save and saved?? Need some help. I talked with Dell and their phone people don't know what to try either. I'm trying to exhaust all possible solutions before I send the computer back to them for repair. Any ideas??