2 Posts
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5349
XPS 8900 won't boot with external hard drive connected
I have an XPS 8900 running windows 10. I've had two different >4gb external hdd's and every time one of them is plugged in during the POST, windows boot manager tries to run dell diagnostics (which takes a long time) and then finally says that it can't find any problems or a boot device.
If I unplug or turn off the externals, it boots into windows with no problems.
I've tried to do a legacy boot, but that doesn't work with windows 10.
I've tried doing UEFI by selecting my drive and not going through Windows Boot Manager, but it says that it can't find my boot device.
I've checked and updated all of my drivers to the latest versions, multiple times. I've been dealing with this problem for nearly 3 years now.
ColeTrainWVU
2 Posts
0
July 11th, 2019 11:00
It had System Config -> USB Config -> Enable Boot Support unchecked and still wouldn't boot to the correct hard drive.
That said, it seems as if I may have found the solution:
The reason why it wouldn't load was because of something to do with windows boot manager not recognizing my primary hard drive and/or placing it in lower precedence whenever an external hdd was detected. Since there isn't a clear way to change boot precedence in windows boot manager, I had to get around that. In order to do that I had to create a new boot option and set it to run before windows boot manager. I tried this before, but I don't think i had the right file selected to boot to.
I did the following and my computer now seems to be booting like it's supposed to.
RoHe
10 Elder
10 Elder
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44.3K Posts
0
July 10th, 2019 17:00
Reboot and immediately press F2 to open BIOS setup.
Look for an option that allows USB booting. The online service manual doesn't show the BIOS screens, so I can't tell you exactly where to look for it, assuming it's there.
Disable USB booting, but don't change anything else in BIOS setup. Save the change and exit setup.
Does that solve the problem?