New nvme SSD installed on Inspiron 7373 boot error

No issues with the swap...probably the easiest swap I've done on any laptop. No BIOS setting changes were needed. The drive was recognized and a new OS was installed to it in which it ran without any issues for a few weeks. I have to now at boot ,F12, run the diagnostics for it to then recognize the drive, reboot then all is well until the next boot where we I repeat. Only 1 drive so WBM is first in UEFI. Both checkboxes are checked for SATA-2 and M.2 PCIe SSD-0. I didn't feel the need to uncheck the SATA-2 checkbox...Should I? Is boot looking for a Sata-2 SSD first? The OEM SSD was a SATA-3 M.2 and I moved to M.2 nvme.

When you installed the new drive, how did you copy over the software?

Do you remember making any changes in the Bios regarding the setting of the SATA controllers?   If not, how is it set currently?

You might try turning off Fast Startup for testing.

Okay thank you very much. Spent a pretty penny on the new SSD (512GB actually, not 256BG) and would hate to see it die although with tech it's always possible. Status on Disk Magician and HD Sentinel show healthy state. I'll just keep an eye on it. Cheers (I've unchecked the sata box so we'll see what impact that has)

A few questions:

Did this new drive work for a while after the upgrade, and only later develop this problem or has it been happening from Day 1?

Also, exactly what is the full process you use to "fix" it each time.

Yes the drive worked from inception for a few weeks. Not much use or storage on it at all if any. New OS. The only thing I do once it boots to Support Assist to indicate no hard drive installed in hold down the power button, because it would only then boot to a black screen with a cursor at the top left of the screen, and boot to F12, run a diagnostic when it then discovers the drive then reboot as normal. That's all regarding any full type process...not much involved.

When I first installed the ssd the first thing I did after the new OS install was go get Samsung Magician for the benchmark, drive health and performance optimization.

If you have the drive installed as NVMe, Support Assist will not see it.

Thanks. Didn't know that. Things have settled down after I unchecked the Sata2 checkbox since they were both checked. All this information is great!

There may another thing to consider.  I'm not saying for you, since you seem to have things booting, but I'm posting here for the benefit of others that might find this post.  I ran into problems that seem to be related to drive encryption when I tried to upgrade my drive.

I have a 7373 (purchased Feb. 2018) and did the same thing as you.  I replaced the original SATA M.2 drive with a larger Samsung 870 EVO NVME drive.  Before the change I checked the manual to confirm that the M/2 slot was PCIe 3 x4.  I then removed the original drive, and placed it in a USB enclosure, which I connected to my desktop PC.  I then installed the new M.2 drive in my desktop motherboard, and cloned the original drive to the new one.  After I installed the new drive back into the 7373, the only BIOS change I made was to uncheck the SATA-2 setting.  Unfortunately, when I tried to boot I got the dreaded blue screen of death saying the my computer needed to be repaired.  The page presented a few recovery options, but nothing worked.

Not one to give up easily, I inserted a windows thumb drive, and tried to run startup repair.  This is the first time I realized that drive encryption might be an issue.  When I ran startup repair, it asked me for the bitlocker key.  Now, before I started all this I didn't even realize that my drive was encrypted.  Apparently it shipped from Dell that way, and I had never printed out the key.  So, I had to install the original drive, boot, and print out the bitlocker key.  Armed with the key, I put in the new drive and took another shot at startup repair.  After entering the key, startup repair ran for several minutes, but eventually failed.  Finally admitting defeat, I inserted a thumb drive with my dell OS recovery image, and performed a (relatively) clean install.

After the recovery image was installed I plugged the original drive into USB to copy files to the new drive, but I was unable to read it.  Considering that I now know the drive was encrypted, I presume that this is why the drive was unavailable.  So, I reinstalled and booted with the original drive.  Interestingly the boot was stopped with a warning related to the Trusted Platform Module (TPM).  Fortunately I could ignore the error and boot normally.  Once booted, I turned off device encryption.  The decryption took less than an hour, and was otherwise painless.  After turning off encryption, I swapped M.2 drives again, and the original drive was accessible using the USB enclosure.  All that remains is copying info from the original drive to the new one.

Apparently the laptop shipped with TPM, secure boot, and bitlocker all enabled by default.  I can't complain that they enabled security measures by default, but it might have been nice if it were mentioned somewhere during the setup process.  There may be something in the manual, but I just never thought to check before I started the process.  I did not try, but I suspect all would have gone smoothly if I had turned off encryption before cloning the drive.  Live and learn I guess.

Thanks I'm about to install 1 TB Nvme SSd and read your article, decrypting my drive now. Hopefully it supports 1TB M.2 NVvME