m17 R3, intermittent no bootable device found

Question

Hello, I recently purchased this laptop and I often get blue screen crashes with different errors, such as KERNAL_DATA_INPAGE ERROR, and often times when I open my laptop, it says 'Checking for media device' then eventually goes to a diagnostics screen and says 'No bootable devices found.' I then toggle power to restart everything, sometimes it goes back to 'Checking for media device', sometimes it restarts my computer properly, and sometimes it goes back into my previous session where I left off when closing my laptop as if I didn't just have any boot problems (all the apps/games I had on before closing my laptop are right where I left them). I have run all the built-in diagnostics and had no issues reported, I have everything up-to-date, I have reset back to factory settings, I constantly use F2 when booting to ensure my boot options are the defaults and this problem still persists. I even called support, they ran all the diagnostics and found no issues and offered no solutions for my problem. Please help.

A51-06 · Answer

Do a fresh install of windows from a usb and that should fix it.

I personally think it’s a OS error if it keeps checking for a media device which could mean a bad boot drive where the OS was located at.

hubbsatx · Answer

How different is this from the Reset this PC option in the Recovery tab in settings? Reset this PC's description is: 'If your PC isn't running well, resetting it might help. This lets you choose to keep your personal files or remove them, and then reinstalls Windows.' I did the Reset this PC option almost two weeks ago and chose to not keep any personal files. My computer was stable at first with no Blue Screens and no Checking for Media Device issues but has returned to its state of giving me these problems often.

hubbsatx · Answer

It's also worth noting that on my Alienware SupportAssist app, the BSOD report is empty, which means this app has not picked up on any of these blue screens that plague me

A51-06 · Answer

The new 2004 update messed my area-51m when I tried resetting the OS from the settings it said something went wrong. I had to manually use the usb and reset the thing from there.

The USB lets you decide where it’s gonna be placed on which storage device unlike the settings option which only resets everything on that particular storage device

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