Old Dell Inspiron 660s No-Boot

Question

I seem to have an issue. I received an old Inspiron 660s SFF computer from my sister in-law. She asked me to back up her pictures from it and then I can just have it. I plugged it in. Everything working normal. As well as normal can be with windows 8.1. Got everything backed up. (burned to CD) A week ago, I decided to upgrade to a SSD from HDD. Worked perfectly. I then upgraded to windows 10. Still working just fine. A couple days later, I got the error, No boot device. I rebooted into bios. Checked everything is as it should be. I set bios to default and rebooted. Still no boot. I used my usb flash drive that has windows 10 install on it. Won't boot from that. I put in my UBCD. Won't boot from that either. I set bios to legacy, disabled secure boot, etc.. Nothing is working. I even ran the onboard diagnostics. It recognizes everything and everything tests good. But won't boot from anything. I even replaced the ram and cmos battery. Put the old hard drive back in too. Still nothing.
Am I missing something?

ejn63 · Answer

Invest in an external drive case or dock and remove the drive. Connect it to a working system by USB and back up the files you need.

Then proceed with a reformat/reinstall of windows if you want to use the system.

user_5be62a · Answer

You must not have read the post. Try again.

redxps630 · Answer

Re: I even replaced the ram and cmos battery. Put the old hard drive back in too. Still nothing.

If cmos battery is replaced w a new one, and you do get video but video says no boot device found, try clear cmos settings by using motherboard jumper.

https://dl.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_desktop/esuprt_inspiron_desktop/inspiron-660s_owner's%20manual_en-us.pdf

p.84

after that try to boot from USB installation media you used before to see if it can boot from that. If yes, try the SSD again.

user_5be62a · Answer

I tried the install install media. No dice. I even followed the bios recovery process to reflash the bios. It would not even do that. I unplugged the hard drive and cd drive. Tried to boot with only a flash drive plugged in. Nothing.

anne_droid · Answer

Hi

I would make both a Legacy MBR bootable device, and an EFI/GPT bootable device.

Whether they be CD/DVD/USB with something like ..........

Linux Mint or Debian 13

While I respect UBCD I prefer the purer OS and add in Gparted as needed.

I think boot with no internal storage initially.

HOWEVER I cannot see that you are in error, if UBCD fails then ..............

Inspiron Desktops

Old Dell Inspiron 660s No-Boot

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