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5206
November 28th, 2017 01:00
XPS 8900 no bootable devices
Hi folks.
I know there are a lot of these messages on this borad but my issue is slightly different and I would appreciate your thoughts.
I supplied a new XPS 8900 to a client, almost 2 years ago, and it has been happily working away all that time. Today I get a call from the client saying the no bootable devices found message appears when she tries to switch the machine on.
Of course, she did nt (as I suggested) create a recovery DVD when she got the machine (I know, I should have done it for her,, so that was my fault) so we now have no recovery media.
I was planning to use a win10 recovery USB from another machine (non Dell) and try to recover the boot sector on the SSD.
Do you guys think that will work or do I need the Dell XPS 8900 specific tools?
Fingers crossed.
Cheers
David
RoHe
10 Elder
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45.2K Posts
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November 28th, 2017 11:00
Or maybe the motherboard battery died and BIOS settings got scrambled or reset to the defaults which aren't correct to boot this system? Eg, check to make sure the boot drive is still first in the boot sequence. BTW: Is the SSD the boot drive or is it used as a cache drive while the hard drive is the boot drive? If the SSD is only a cache make sure BIOS is still set to RAID.
You can download tools to create a bootable USB with the latest Fall Creators Update for Win 10 for free directly from MS. That will save you from having to install 100's of updates to any older version you may have on DVD. You'll be able to use the USB to repair Windows or to reinstall it, but make sure their files are backed up on eternal media first.
www.microsoft.com/.../windows10
If you have to do a clean install on this drive or on a new one, you'll have to download the drivers for Win 10 from Dell's support page for this model, here:
www.dell.com/.../drivers
Be sure to select Win 10 from the list before downloading any drivers.
RoHe
10 Elder
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45.2K Posts
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November 29th, 2017 13:00
DELL-Alasdair R
4 Operator
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754 Posts
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November 28th, 2017 02:00
Hi David,
It could be that the drive has failed altogether, so before attempting any recovery I would suggest running the diagnostics (tap F12 at start up then select diagnostics from the boot menu)
You should be able to create recovery media by following this guide:
www.dell.com/.../how-to-create-and-use-the-dell-windows-recovery-image
Let us know how you get on.
daviddoherty
3 Posts
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November 28th, 2017 03:00
Hi Alasdair R
Thanks for getting back so quickly. I did ask her to run the full diagnostics and she tells me it reported all OK. She got a validation code of 99833.
Both the ssd and the hard drive can be seen in BIOS so I am hoping the MBR just needs repairing. Fingers crossed.
Thanks for the link too. I will let you know if this sorts the issue.
regards
David
daviddoherty
3 Posts
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November 29th, 2017 01:00
Hi folks
I took everyone's advice and downloaded the recovery software from Dell onto a USB. from a command prompt i tried to repair and rebuild the boot sector (good old bootrec) but it told me it could not find any windows installations. It seems the drive have been locked, i suspect by the backup software, but as the client's files were fully backed up I reinstalled windows and wiped the existing drives.
All went well and everything is back in it's place. I think I will recommend a different backup solution.
Thanks for all the help.
regards
David
ieee488
4 Operator
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11.1K Posts
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November 29th, 2017 05:00
The most time efficient method is to do an image backup of the hard drive and do it regularly.
There are several freeware program to do that.
I use Clonezilla but it may be too complicated for your client.