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M.2 NVMe Disappears After Windows 10 Install
Long time reader, first time poster.
I'm having a strange issue with Precision 5510's (posted this under XPS since it was the closest available forum, apologies) where after installing Windows 10, the M.2 NVMe SSD will randomly disappear from the system, giving us a "no boot device found" error. If you go into the BIOS when this happens the drive will not be listed there. It doesn't happen all of our machines, probably about a third of them and it's inconsistent; you can boot the machine 10 times and out of that 2 times it will see the drive and boot just fine.
These machines have the M.2 NVMe drives, which we're using as the primary drive for the OS, and they also have an additional SATA SSD being used as a data drive. I did just find this: http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/sln301036/windows-10-install-with-nvme-ssd-and-sata-drives?lang=en, which is the closest thing I can find relating to our issue, but isn't exactly what we're experiencing and I haven't tried the workaround yet.
For installing Windows 10 we're pxe booting and installing an image using Ivanti. I'm not privy to all of the details of that environment.
Up to this point we'd open a ticket with Dell support, they would come out and replace the MOBO and that would resolve it. All the signs point to hardware issues to me but I find it hard to believe that all of these machines keep having the same hardware issue, especially when many of these machines had been running just fine for a year or more when they were on Windows 7. I've not seen the issue occur on the same machine again after the MOBO replacement.
Those are all of the details I can think of at the moment, but I'm sure someone will think of something I neglected to detail.
Has anyone run into this before? Any ideas what could be happening? Much appreciated.
-Stefan
jphughan
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June 22nd, 2018 09:00
If it had only been one or two systems, I'd have said hardware issue as well. If it's happening on several, I'm suspecting a firmware issue with the system and/or SSD itself. Make sure you're running the latest firmware release on both. If that doesn't fix it, then I suppose it could still be a firmware issue that simply hasn't been resolved, but at that point I'd still try a hardware replacement just to see if things improve rather than waiting around.
Saltgrass
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June 22nd, 2018 12:00
Something you might try is to turn off the Fast Startup in the chose what the power buttons do. It might make a difference as to whether you are cold booting the system or restarting.
It sounds like the system are not seeing the drives correctly during boot. Possibly being confused by the two drives or is picking up the PCIe version of the drive. It appears that system is SATA only. If you were running an M.2 SATA drive you might have a different experience.
Have you tried testing without the 2.5 inch drive?
jphughan
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June 22nd, 2018 12:00
The Precision 5510 is the sister system of the XPS 15 9550. It definitely supports NVMe; it is not SATA only.
AbuZaqan
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June 22nd, 2018 13:00
I have been bringing the BIOS up to the most recent version, which I believe is 1.7.1, but I hadn't thought of trying to update the SSD. Good thinking and thanks for the suggestion. I'll give it a try when I'm back in the office Monday and I'll let you know how it goes.
AbuZaqan
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June 22nd, 2018 13:00
I could give the fast startup setting a shot. I don't think it's an issue regarding the system getting confused, I have disabled the SATA drive in the BIOS in troubleshooting to no success. And as @jphughan stated, the system definitely supports NVMe, it is a PCIe slot. I've experienced the issue both with cold boot and rebooting.
Saltgrass
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June 22nd, 2018 16:00
OK, maybe I am looking at the wrong Precision 5510 Laptop. I read storage interface of SATA 3 Gbps and SATA 6 Gbps.
I am not saying it can't use such a drive, just like Dell uses those drives on other systems that are PCIe capable.
AbuZaqan
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June 26th, 2018 09:00
I updated the SSD firmware and have done at least 20 reboots and cold boots and haven't run into the issue once, so it looks like this resolves it. Thanks for the suggestion, I really appreciate it!