E7470 Unmountable Boot Volume after BIOS Update

I am sorry to read that you are having this problem.  I haven't read of any problems like this with the E7470.  What version of the BIOS did you install and what type of drives is the systems configured with?

TB

I'm having a similar issue with the E5570 and the 1.0.5.00 BIOS.    I was setting them up for our imaging script and the last command in the script is to apply the BIOS and reboot.

I would have intermittent issues between the same unmountable boot volume as the OP describes, other times I might just get STOP messages.   At first I assumed it was one of the drivers, so I started from scratch.  loading just my base image with no drivers, and no bios and it loads fine.   I kept adding drivers in one by one and no problems.   finally I added the BIOS update back in and that's when things went to heck again with unmountable boot volumes and other BSODs.    The issue seems to clear itself up once I erase the windows partition and re-image, so the E5570 has the 1.5.0 bios now with no problems, but it seems the act of updating the BIOS is causing the issue, not necessarily the BIOS itself.    

I saw that Dell took down the 1.0.5.00 BIOS last week, but now it's back up.  the update date has change to today, but I checked and the hash is still the same.

What changes did you do to get your machine booting again? I do have the same problem after BIOS upgrade.

I believe we got this figured out, but we only recently implemented our "fix" so not certain that this is the solution.   The problem is not necessarily the BIOS per se, but how the drive was formatted and with what M.2 SSD drivers.   We use WinPE to format and image our computers.  The WinPE stick we use had an older "Intel Rapid Storage" driver.   The first step in our imaging script is that it erases the existing partitions and creates and formats a new partition.   According to this dell document:

www.dell.com/.../SLN300184

you must have version 14.5 or better of the Rapid Storage driver for windows to properly see the M.2 SSD drive.  our WinPE USB drive had a much older version, so our proposed solution is to update our WinPE USB drive to use the current Rapid Store driver.    The thought being that since the partition was being created/formatted with an older driver, that when the BIOS was updated, since drive wasn't formatted with the correct driver, something just broke when the BIOS was updated and caused the unmountable boot volume.

but as for what we did to get a system booting again, we had to start over and erase the partition.  Since this was happening on freshly imaged laptops, there was no data lost so it was no big deal for us other than time lost.

Like I said earlier though, we only recently implemented this fix.  We've only imaged a few machines since then, so not 100 percent certain if this is truly the fix.   So I would check to see what version of the Rapid Storage driver you used to format your partition and if it's older than 14.5, update it to the current version, re-image the laptop, and see if you have the issue after that.

I believe we had to disable Secure Boot before it would boot again. I am still having intermittent issues with this, but rebooting a couple of times seems to fix it now. I will point out that this is still an issue even with the most recent release of the BIOS. If it is a problem with other drivers as tmenkeNE said, Dell should be making that clear on the BIOS download page.

I don't think my updated RapidStore drivers fixed the issue.  We recently imaged a batch of new laptops with the updated drivers and after the last step which is the BIOS update, we had a mix of BSODs or the system booted into the recovery partition, though some of the laptops booted up just fine too.

I just checked Dell's driver list and it looks like they recently released a new BIOS 1.08.03 for the E5570.  It's listed as "Urgent"  but no fixes are listed and the "enhancements" don't look to be too critical.   We're going to try using this new BIOS and see how that goes.  I'm also trying to track down if there is a firmware update for the M.2 SSD or anything like that, but I'm having trouble finding a model number.

the new 1.08.03 BIOS doesn't seem to make any difference either.  I've got no idea what the problem is, but the BIOS update process seems to trigger the issue.  So for the short term, the workaround is to remove the BIOS update from our imaging script.

after the latest BIOS update, my usual fix of erasing all partitions and re-imaging wouldn't seem to work.  The DISKPART format commands or the imaging command would either not see the drive and error out, or it would, but it would be extremely slow.    Resetting the BIOS back to factory default, so far, seems to have cleared it up.    Still no idea what the heck is going on.   I still have a hunch it's related to the new M.2 SSD drives since the error is an unmountable boot device,  but the BIOS update seems to still be the catalyst.