Opitplex 7060 BIOS setup issues. UEFI drive not seen. Boot order changes. No boot from USB.

Re: Why does the boot order change without me changing it?

CMOS may sometimes be corrupted.  replace cmos battery w a new one then clear cmos settings via motherboard jumper.

when done enter bios to change sata operation from (Dell default) RAID ON to AHCI.  save changes.

press F12 when power up.  select UEFI: ssd as boot device.

the hdd containing clone of UEFI OS of ssd should show up as a second UEFI boot drive on F12 too.

This may hopefully set up Windows boot manager to boot from ssd by default.

under normal operation when OS is installed on the boot drive and setup to boot, Windows boot manager is the first boot order which contain an EFI link to your ssd, therefore the ssd does not show itself as a discrete boot device in bios.  the hdd was not linked to WBM but has a bootable EFI partition, therefore it would show up as second UEFI boot device in bios.

As I remember, this PC came with a 256GB SSD and a 1TB HDD. The operating system was on the SSD.  I then cloned the SSD to the HDD, replaced the 256GB SSD with a 1TB SSD and clones the system back from the HDD onto the new 1TB SSD. From that point on, it booted from the 1TB SSD and all was well. I don't think I ever changed anything in the BIOS.

About a week ago it started booting from the HDD, which is where all this got started. When I looked at the boot order it was Windows Boot Manager followed by the only UEFI device, which was the SSD. The HDD wasn't given as an option.

So according to your scheme, the original 256GB SSD would have been been selected as the Boot drive by the Windows Boot Manager and so it wouldn't have shown up as an UEFI device, but the HDD would, if I an understanding you correctly.  It looks like now, the HDD is being selected by the Windows Boot Manager and the SSD is offered as an alternative UEFI boot device, hence I'm having to move UEFI to the first boot choice in order to get the system to boot from it.  It wasn't that way a week ago as far as I know, though I had not looked at the boot order. It was certainly booting from the HDD. I don't know what changed it!

Should clearing the BIOS data and rebooting then put the SSD in the Windows Boot Manager as the first boot choice, and then offer the HDD as a UEFI choice

The CMOS battery voltage looks low. It measures 2.73v from the + terminal to PC case chassis ground. The voltage should be more like the 3.3v (under no load), which I see from a spare Toshiba 2032. So it does look like the CMOS batter should be replaced, whether of not it is the cause of this problem. I'm a bit concerned about losing the BIOS configuration, though since I hadn't messed with it I assume it's pretty much default settings. I did notice RAID was set to On (which you say is the default).

Is it 100% necessary to short the motherboard jumpers to clear the BIOS?  I finally found a schematic which shows where they are - which is under the HDD and CD/DVD player. I can remove them, but it's a pain. I've seem it suggested that just taking the old battery out and waiting for 30 minutes will do the same thing.

Thanks for your help.  This aspect of PC operation is outside my comfort zone!

Re: Should clearing the BIOS data and rebooting then put the SSD in the Windows Boot Manager as the first boot choice, and then offer the HDD as a UEFI choice

clearing bios would remove the Windows Boot manager from BIOS boot device.  Under F12 when you pick one of the UEFI boot device listed to boot, that device is automatically in enrolled in Windows BM, so next time when you inspect BIOS the WBM would show up again (and linked to the UEFI boot drive you chose).

Replacing a low CMOS battery may just do the trick of clearing bios, but if that does not work, using the jumper is the more effective way.

Hi

Quite often I get a windows update that changes my bios boot order, MS are like that.

you can try override the change by using F12 choose boot device trick

I pulled the HDD and CD/DVD so I could access the jumpers. I was surprised to see a blue jumper on the service mode pins. The Clear CMOS and Password pins were open as expected. The PC has never given any sign that it was in service mode (no warnings), Is this any sort of an issue?

I tried searching and it seems like the default should be that the service mode pins should be open, but I didn't find anything specific to the 7060, or what might happen if the pins were connected (as they are right now).

your pic shows the jumper is on pwd pins.  the service mode jumper is the middle 2 pins.  this is expected default.  jumper is normally on pwd pins.  to clear cmos or to enter service mode (to disable Intel ME), you move the jumper over.

I think the silk screen of SERVICE MODE is positioned to be confusing.  it is actually meant to be for the middle two pins.

the right two pins where PW_CLR is underneath is for clear password.

@redxps630​ 

Thanks again. Finding the board layout is ludicrously difficult. I can't find it on the Dell website and I can't find it via Google. The only hint I have is the link https://imgur.com/a/B1quQmF#vdVITyW which takes you to an image, which appears to have come from Dell at sone point (though no hint about where to find it), and the jumper set (#14) is describes as "clear cmos/password/service mode", so I assumed they were in that order, the cmos clear on the left side pins (1,2) the password clear in the middle pins (3,4) and the service mode in the right two pins (5,6). The silk screen printing is ambitious as to which is for PW and which is for System. Looks like I was wrong.

The 5055 owner's manual has a section on the jumpers! They are PW-CLR/CMOS-CLR/SERVICE mode, in that order, PWR_CLR is shorted by default, the other two are open. I cant find a 7060 owner's manual and the service manual doesn't mention the jumpers as far as I can tell!

I I left the jumper in place, removed the old CMOS battery, shorted the CMOS CLEAR pins, put in a new battery and proceeded to boot. With F12 I selected the SSD as the boot drive and the system proceeded to boot. It did boot from the SSD but I had lost mouse and keyboard, So I has to do a hard shutdown and a couple more boot attempts and it finally booted up with mouse and keyboard support, but from the HDD, not the SSD. So I shut it down, rebooted with F12 and looked at the boot order, which was now Windows Boot manager with the SSD as the option. Just the same as before. I moved the SSD up to the top of the boot order and it booted from the SSD. Closed it down and rebooted and it booted from the SSD.  So I think I'm back in exactly the place I stared, except I have a fresh CMOS battery!

It wasn't fun and the process it bring it back up after the battery swap was not very clean or very smooth and somewhat worrying at times when it either didn't seem to want to boot, or would boot up without the mouse or keyboard. I'll admit that I'm reluctant to try it again to see if it goes any smoother the 2nd time.