Dell Inspiron 24 (3455) won't boot after cloning onto Samsung 850 EVO SSD, or full reinstall.

I have the same problem except for an 850 EVO SSD. I thought there was something wrong with the first SSD so I sent it back for a replacement, but it does the same thing.

Secure boot needs to be turned OFF before cloning or installation of the OS is done.  Once the system is up and running correctly, it can then be turned back on.

Thanks for the quick reply. It still doesn't work for me though. I turned Secure boot off and tried to clone the HD and tried another fresh install, but no luck booting on either. Any other ideas would be appreciated.

Yes, Thanks for the reply. The 3455 AIO only has room for one drive, so I have been unplugging the old drive and plugging in the SSD drive into that same plug. The SSD drive is seen in the BIOS as the boot drive, but when I try to boot from it a diagnostics screen pops up and runs several tests and then tells me no boot drive was found.

Trying a fresh install, all the files are loaded to the SSD but on the first reboot it just goes to the dell screen and does nothing.

I'm thinking it has to be some setting in the BIOS since it boots fine with the original drive, but neither cloning or a fresh install on the SSD will boot.

Are you removing the original drive before booting the cloned drive for the first time?  

Hi! I'm facing the exact same problem trying to upgrade my Dell Inspiron one 24 3455 to a SSD drive. I think the only thing your are losing is some support to new features for a faster OS initialization and security since EFI supports a more secure boot. Let me know if you had any improvment on this case. I will try the installation, again :(, with UEFI off. 

I've been using the new SSD now for a week or so, and I haven't seen any drawbacks so far. My computer is faster doing everything. I say go for it.

I've been battling this same issue. I've turned off secure boot and have cloned my drive using several different tools (samsung's utility, Marcrium Reflect, a couple of others) and have not been able to boot to the new drive. Using the standard UEFI boot it tosses me into a Dell diagnostic program. If I turn off UEFI and select Legacy, and select Hard Drive as my primary boot device, I get a DOS screen with an error that the drive cannot be found. This seems to be a persistent issue with this computer. Any other suggestions?

I have the same problem. I have set BIOS to Legacy and set the SSD as the 1st boot device.

no luck.

I had the pleasure of attempting to replace a faulty hard drive in an Inspiron 24 (3455) and came across this thread and I was set on using UEFI; I tried injecting Dell's WinPE driver package and loading various drivers manually with no success. UEFI is better than BIOS for a number of reasons, it can protect against rootkit viruses and boots faster. I was unsuccessful, I might be able to come up with a solution, but Shadow of the Tomb Raider isn't going to play itself and the user might want their computer back soon.

The initial issue was that the computer kept booting to recovery mode, I found two problems: the drive had bad sectors and the EFI partition was damaged.

I fixed the original HDD:

• In recovery mode I went to command prompt and ran "chkdsk /F /X /R" on every partition to find and mark bad blocks to make the drive usable
  • If a partition doesn't have a letter, use the "mountvol" command to get the partition's ID that will be formatted like "\\?\Volume{alpha-numeric characters}\" and then run: chkdsk "\\?\Volume{alpha-numeric characters}" /F /X /R (remove the "\" at the end of the partition ID.
• Fixed the EFI partition by following instructions from BillyBigun at https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-performance/windows-10-bootrec-fixboot-access-is-denied/747c4180-7ff3-4bc2-b6cc-81e572d546df
  • I was concerned about formatting the EFI partition, but all necessary files were replaced and I was able to boot to Dell's Windows installation on the original drive in UEFI mode.

With the original HDD accessible, I thought I'd achieve success by creating recovery media inside Dell's Windows 10 installation. DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME (seriously, it'll take hours to build the media even using a USB 3.0 key). Using Windows 10's 'create recovery media' on the 3455 will re-create the partitions on your new drive and place Windows on the OS drive, but it won't boot, it doesn't put WinPE on the recovery partition, and it doesn't put a recovery image on the Image partition!

You're probably going to need some serious BCD knowledge to get UEFI working with an aftermarket drive installation on the 3455. I tried to use Partition Wizard, it was promising because I was able to get it to copy all data and partitions, but the partitions and/or BCD needed some serious TLC to get the drive to boot (the BillyBigun solution might work, I didn't try). Since this machine can live on with its original HDD repaired by chkdsk, I'm leaving it with that and if I have to replace the drive in the future then it'll have to live in BIOS mode. If it were my job to ensure this machine could live on in UEFI mode, I'd create a solution, but Dell apparently didn't think a budget AMD PC was worth the time and I'm siding with them at this point.

Years ago Dell had software that would build proper restore media, I think there was some kind of legal BS regarding restore media that prevented it from being easily obtainable; perhaps recent legislation regarding right to repair will make this media easier to obtain in the future. 

I'm trying to do the same thing with my Inspiron 24 3455. It looks like this issue has been going on for some time. I would like to know if some can provide some details on how they were able to do a successful upgrade to an SSD drive. I have tried all the methods I have been able to find to this point without any success.

I have seen this problem on two different Inspiron 24 3455's now.  First time was with a Crucial SSD, second time with a Samsung SSD.  I think those two brands of SSD's are the problem. I've seen other posts with those 2 brands too. With them I was unable to clone or even to install a brand new Windows 10 after formatting. I was finally able to install new Windows from scratch on another brand: "ADATA", and I was at last able to clone (with Macrium) onto a PNY SSD. Both times I had UEFI with Secure boot Disabled, and TPM Disabled, but I don't know if these are really issues.  I hope this saves someone some serious time! I've probably spent 16 hours on it!

After pounding my head against the wall for about 4 hours, I stumbled on this thread and the Macrium Free.  It worked great first try and no around with the BIOS settings.  I did have to resize one of the partitions in Macrium which was a little weird but then it was fine.  Macrium Free is the way to go