I forgot to mention one downside to this solution...I cannot clone a hard drive that is installed IN the 15z to an external eSATA-connected drive! I use a bootable GHOST thumb drive to start the clone. If my boot USB thumb drive is in the eSATA combo port, I have no where to connect my destination hard drive!! Arrrgghh!
I heard about the possibility of booting from a bootable SD card. Anyone tried that?
My own XPS 15z was booting fine with a usb key in any of the ports (I usually park my wireless mouse dongle in the eSata) until a few weeks ago. Then it just stopped booting from usb. Its not a problem with the usb drives - they still work fine on my old Inspiron. What I have noticed is that the access LEDs on the drives do not flash during the attempted boot. This suggests that the 15z is failing to access the USB ports for some reason. Driver problem?
With BIOS version A10, booting from USB works on all three ports until the machine is hibernated, then it doesn't work at all (reproduced on multiple machines with both Windows and Linux).
Un-hibernating and shutting down completely re-enables boot from USB again. Changing the motherboard while hibernated also works around the issue (once).
My XPS 15Z used to boot from USB without problems until recently. Now the hard disc failed.
Now, while I'm waiting to be replaced within warranty (lucky me, still one month of valid warranty), the laptop refuses to boot from any of the 3 USB ports, with 3 different sticks (Ubuntu, WinPE and Win8). BIOS ver. is A06.
Frustrating!
What could be the reason and is there any workaround? (reset cmos, buy another one etc. I can't update bios to A10 if it's not booting).
andrejsporn
2 Posts
1
November 8th, 2011 06:00
Hi,
I had the same problem, after I updated bios to last version (I think A06) I was able to boot from USB from combine port (eSata/USB).
LANCORP_88b25e
2 Intern
•
224 Posts
0
November 9th, 2011 05:00
Well, on a 15z I just tried that on, it DID WORK! Thank you.
I did try updating to A06 previous, but I must have tried booting from the USB 3.0 port. Apparently, then, the USB 3.0 ports are not bootable?
I'll try the A06/Combo port boot on a couple other 15z's I have for clients, and see if it also works and will report back for conclusion.
LANCORP_88b25e
2 Intern
•
224 Posts
0
November 9th, 2011 05:00
I forgot to mention one downside to this solution...I cannot clone a hard drive that is installed IN the 15z to an external eSATA-connected drive! I use a bootable GHOST thumb drive to start the clone. If my boot USB thumb drive is in the eSATA combo port, I have no where to connect my destination hard drive!! Arrrgghh!
I heard about the possibility of booting from a bootable SD card. Anyone tried that?
Neilsdesperandu
1 Message
0
June 13th, 2012 00:00
My own XPS 15z was booting fine with a usb key in any of the ports (I usually park my wireless mouse dongle in the eSata) until a few weeks ago. Then it just stopped booting from usb. Its not a problem with the usb drives - they still work fine on my old Inspiron. What I have noticed is that the access LEDs on the drives do not flash during the attempted boot. This suggests that the 15z is failing to access the USB ports for some reason. Driver problem?
DebianUser
1 Message
0
July 17th, 2012 01:00
With BIOS version A10, booting from USB works on all three ports until the machine is hibernated, then it doesn't work at all (reproduced on multiple machines with both Windows and Linux).
Un-hibernating and shutting down completely re-enables boot from USB again. Changing the motherboard while hibernated also works around the issue (once).
Clearly this is a bug in the BIOS.
tmax11
4 Posts
0
June 28th, 2014 08:00
My XPS 15Z used to boot from USB without problems until recently. Now the hard disc failed.
Now, while I'm waiting to be replaced within warranty (lucky me, still one month of valid warranty), the laptop refuses to boot from any of the 3 USB ports, with 3 different sticks (Ubuntu, WinPE and Win8).
BIOS ver. is A06.
Frustrating!
What could be the reason and is there any workaround? (reset cmos, buy another one etc. I can't update bios to A10 if it's not booting).
Thank you.
tmax11
4 Posts
0
June 28th, 2014 15:00
Problem solved.
Disconnected the cmos battery for 30 seconds (easy task, there is a tutorial on youtube on how to replace it). It works like charm.
Errata: BIOS ver. is A12.
P.S. Funny, the message displayed before was "Operation system not found" (sic!)
Guess who's writing the software for dell (bios, drivers, tools et all) :emotion-4: