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June 18th, 2023 06:00
XPS One 2720, no bootable device error
My mom has an old XPS One 2720 computer running Windows 10 that she would like to use as a secondary computer. However, whenever she tries to boot it, she gets a "No bootable device" error. Because of a variety of reasons, we strongly suspect that the BOIS (Or EUFI? Not sure what the relation between the two is) got messed up somehow and that's what's causing the error. She's tried all of the recovery suggestions she could find from the Internet, to no avail. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how to get the computer back up and running.
One Internet suggestion was to download a BIOS driver (? Not sure what the software for the BIOS is called) from Dell to a USB device and boot from that. But I have 3 questions about that.
First, how do I tell her computer to boot from the USB. I suspect I know the answer. But given my success rate so far, I don't want to take any chances.
Second (and more serious), if I download the BIOS driver from Dell to my computer, does it save it as a file? Or is there an internal storage area when BIOS downloads/updates are stored? I certainly don't want to to over-write my own BIOS with the BIOS driver for another computer.
And lastly, if the BIOS driver is saved as a file, do I have to do anything to tell her computer to use the file? Or will her computer automatically find the file and execute it?
Chino de Oro
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June 18th, 2023 09:00
The error no bootable device found can be fixed easily and it's also can be complicated. Omission of information leading to the problem can make the issue harder to resolve. If assuming that everything had been tried and nothing worked. What you are asking for may not be the right solution neither.
1) To tell the computer to boot from USB, the USB drive itself must be bootable. With the machine power off, plug the drive into one of USB port. Then press power button, as soon as the Dell logo appears (or it could be sooner), tap the F12 key continuously (about twice per second), do not hold the key down. Until you get a message one time boot menu, you can stop tapping the F12 key. In the menu screen, you will see a description of the USB drive, use arrow key to select it and hit Enter key, the USB drive will boot. If you missed the one time boot menu some how, you can just power off and power on the machine again, tap the F12 key until you get to the one time boot menu.
2) The BIOS firmware update from Dell is an executable file. It can be download and store to the location of your choice.
3) Copy the BIOS firmware to a USB drive that had been formatted with FAT32. Plug the USB drive to the XPS One. Follow the process to get one time boot menu described earlier. Use arrow key to select Flash firmware update from the menu. A firmware update screen will appear, follow instruction to proceed and BIOS flash will run.
Flashing BIOS firmware has a very low chance of fixing problem. I advise to pursuit other methods first. Before you attempt with the BIOS firmware flash, replace a CR2032 coin cell battery (CMOS) in the system using instruction from the user manual. After giving it a new battery, enter BIOS settings from F2 or F12, switch SATA mode to either RAID, AHCI, or ATA. One of this mode may enable the BIOS firmware to recognize the boot device. So, keep switching until exhaust all modes.
Another option to consider, replace the current boot drive with a new SSD, perform a new Windows installation. Put the old drive into a cheap USB adapter and connecting to a working computer for data retrieval.
Note: BIOS firmware and system guide were linked