15 R2, adding an SSD, boot order

Question

Hello guys it's been more than one year i've been facing this problem and it's really frustrating cause I haven't found a single person in the net with my problems!

I have an alienware 15 R2 but with only a 1tb hdd option cause i wanted to upgrade when i could to an SSD of my choice when i could. And when i finally did (i bought a "1tb samsung 970 evo M.2 NVmE SSd") i installed on my laptop with the proper drivers cloned my HDD to it, till here no problem. Then here it comes, the BIOS of the alienware 15 R2 is the worst BIOS ever installed on PC! It's a simple as dumb as impractical as it is! You literally can't choose boot options only change the order on it which are (-windows boot manager -ipv4 - ipv6) but can't change boot order of drives nor if you wanted to find the file path of the SSD and select it (by the way my ssd is seen in the bios but can't select it!)

Anyone else had or have the same problem?

Mary G · Answer

Windows 10 doesn't use the bios to change boot order. Reboot the computer and immediately start tapping F12 without waiting for any screen to get to the boot menu. You select the boot drive there.

Edit your post to remove the bad language before the post gets deleted.

_Tony_ · Answer

Yeah i know how to go to bios and change boot and type and all this stuff but the problem is the weird bios itself!

crimsom · Answer

Hi @_Tony_ you are making the transition from one SATA HDD (boot) to a NVMe SSD (boot) + SATA HDD (storage).

Computers cannot cope with having two OS (C:) drives installed. To check that your cloned NVMe SSD (boot) is fully functional, unplug the HDD cable and switch on the 15 R2. The BIOS/UEFI window should appear and ask to use the new NVMe SSD (boot) drive, then the system should complete boot and start-up as expected. If ok, the cloned NVMe SSD (boot) is good and the SATA HDD boot drive should be changed to a storage drive.

Please remember to share an update. Thank you.

_Tony_ · Answer

Yep, i have tried this method.. but as it appears it turned on and didn't boot from the SSD. And i'm pretty sure the cloning was successful cause i was able to boot from the SSD but by doing it manually which mean that i went to bios changed it to RAID, then pressed f12 and went to boot setup and selected manually my SSD to boot windows from and it works, but the problem is that i have to do so each time if i want to boot from SSD and if i leave it RAID and don't go to f12 and select the SSD the laptop won't boot and stuck on alienware black screen cause automatically it will want to boot from HDD and it can't work unless i turn off the pc and chage the settings to AHCI (back to normal) and then automatically it when i turn on the windows and boot itfrom HDD like normal but won't boot from SSD cause like i said we can't change the order. Also if my pc is set to normal (AHCI) then manually when i turn it on open f12 and try to boot it manually from SSD it won't boot and will stuck on alienware black load screen.

So yeah that's my problem in details, sorry for this big msg but couldn't find any help all over the internet over this precise problem

Thank you if you would like to help me@crimsom @Mary G

A51-06 · Answer

I just think you need to just reformat the HDD and delete all the data then install the SSD so that it can be recongized and then bootable.

_Tony_ · Answer

Ah ok! So there isn't any other option to do?

crimsom · Answer

Hi @_Tony_ do not change content of HDD until the function of the cloned SSD has been checked to work. Disconnecting the HDD drive cable, and starting the system with the cloned SSD is essential, so that fall back option to create another cloned SSD is not lost, should the first cloned attempt have a fault.

A51-06 · Answer

Forgot to mention that crimsom, thanks dude.

0ldT1m3r · Answer

_Tony_ did you ever get it to boot from m.2 I have the same Alienware laptop and installed m.2 SSD and have the exact same issue. I unplugged HDD and only have m.2 SSD in the laptop is seen and has OS but laptop 💻 doesn't boot from it!

Did you get it working??

Alienware

15 R2, adding an SSD, boot order

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