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December 23rd, 2025 03:55
Pro Max Tower T2 FCT2250, BIOS always tries to boot from external USB drive on warm boot only
I have tried everything I know of to resolve this problem with my new Dell Pro Max T2 Tower. The BIOS and Intel Chipsets are on the latest versions. There are no errors running diagnostics. In the BIOS I have tried adjusting the boot order to use "Windows Boot Manager" first and then the internal HDD. I have also tried putting the internal HDD first in the boot order. I have unchecked "Allow USB Boot" device. Fast boot is disabled. UEFI Boot Path Security is set to "Always, Except Internal HDD".
This problem does NOT occur on a cold boot. A cold boot honors the settings in the BIOS. It is only on a Windows restart (i.e. warm boot) where the BIOS always tries to boot from the external USB drive. When this happens the Dell logo appears but no spinning circle. It never gets to the Windows OS boot partition because it is locked trying to scan the large 2TB external USB drive which has data only.
I am not getting anywhere with Dell support. I would like the firmware engineering team to investigate and triage this issue.
Perhaps someone has run into this issue and has successfully resolved it? Otherwise, this problem appears to be a firmware bug that only affects the warm boot path, not the cold boot path.
All help is gratefully appreciated. Thank you.
Maxd1
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101 Posts
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December 23rd, 2025 17:54
See what sticks:
1. Disable USB Legacy Support (if doable).
2. Not seeing it on initial boot > assign the usb drive a different letter.
3. You've done a restart after a proper disconnect/removal of drive ?
4. File system of external relevant ?
dwhitejazz
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December 23rd, 2025 19:06
The BIOS does not have a direct setting for enabling or disabling legacy USB support. I think this BIOS implicitly disables it.
Assigning a different drive letter has no effect. I have multiple external Glyph hard drives. All are NTFS and no separate boot sector. They are data only drives.
Yes, if the drives are removed this action allows the warm boot restart to complete. Even if the system is stuck on the Dell logo screen removal of the drives allows bootup into Windows to succeed.
Right now this is a "nuisance" issue but I should not have to do the unplug procedure on reboot. My old Dell Precision Tower does not have this problem.