Inspiron 15, 7537 will not boot from Macrium Reflect Rescue USB Flash drive

You might want to post in the Macrium Reflect forum for more detailed help (I'm over there too!), but it seems your system isn't even detecting your Rescue Media flash drive.  If it were, you'd see a boot option for the USB drive at the one-time boot menu accessed by pressing F12.  Reflect Rescue Media can boot in either UEFI or Legacy BIOS mode, and you should boot it in whichever mode your main OS uses, which appears to be UEFI.  I would start by rebuilding your Rescue Media on a working system if at all possible, even if it means installing the Free version somewhere.  The only thing you'll lose by using the Free version is the ReDeploy feature, which you wouldn't need anyway if you're restoring an image captured from that system.

I'll also add that you'll want to undo that change in the BIOS you made from UEFI over to Legacy Mode, since that will prevent your OS from booting even after you perform a restore.  Reflect Rescue Media supports booting with UEFI and Secure Boot enabled, fyi.  However, if you have a very high-capacity flash drive, you might also want to try a different model.  Some systems don't boot properly from very large flash drives.

Thanks for the tip on the Macrium forum. Since I use the free version for home I didn’t think I’d be allowed into their forum. I've got enough information from the Win10 and this forum for now.

A couple of questions about your posts:

1. The flash drive is only 32GB so I doubt that’s a problem?

2. Booting the machine as defaulted, F12, as I initially posted does NOT offer a straight up option to select a USB drive

F12 on boot loads the following boot screen:

UEFI Boot: Secure Boot On:

Windows Boot Manager (thought I’d get a list but the machine booted as normal)

Onboard NIC – Ipv4

Onboard NIC – Ipv6

Other Options:

Setup

Diagnostics

Peripheral Device Setting (OPROM Setting)

Change boot mode setting (I selected this, then Legacy, then USB, but the result was ‘Operational system not found’

3. When I did find boot to USB (changing the BIOS) it appeared that the machine or the reflect/USB didn’t recognize where they were or what they were supposed to do and I go a ‘no OS found’. But I checked the flash drive on my Lenovo and it booted just fine.

4. I thought you had to create the Reflect boot media on the machine with the problem. I just assumed that part of the boot creation process was installing the machines necessary drivers along with Reflect and boot instructions. Are you saying that, as long as the OS is the same, you can use boot media created on one machine on another?

5. It was also suggested that I do an ISO instead of whatever other boot media I’ve got on the flash drive?

6. Bottom line. I’m going to first use the tutorial from the Win10 forum on how to boot Reflect from a RAM drive and, assuming that works, then come back and figure out how to get the Dell’s USB Reflect to boot.

If you have the USB device connected from the moment the system boots, when you press F12, it should show the USB device as a bootable target in the UEFI category under your default BIOS settings.  If you can only get the USB device to appear under Legacy, then for some reason that flash drive isn't set up for UEFI booting, and if your OS is using UEFI, you want to boot Reflect Rescue Media the same way, otherwise certain things like "Fix Boot Problems" wouldn't work correctly.

You do NOT have to create Rescue Media on the machine having the problem.  It can help because part of the Rescue Media wizard involves injecting drivers detected as required for that system and not native to Windows PE, but if your Rescue Media uses WinPE 10, there's an excellent chance that all of the required drivers are already built into WinPE anyway.  Also note that the OS the system is running has absolutely no bearing on the Rescue Media's WinPE version OR the versions of Windows it can back up and restore.  You can use basically Rescue Media generated on ANY system to boot ANY other system.  The only potential snag is that it might not have all of the necessary drivers, but even those can be supplied within the Rescue Media environment if needed, or placed under the Drivers folder in the appropriate subfolder to keep on a more permanent basis.

Thanks for the clarification on the boot media.

I never thought about the BIOS. This is my wife's seldom used travel machine so I ordinarily have zip to do with it. I don't think the BIOS has been updated since purchased! Does Dell have a reasonably simple way to find/dl/install the proper update for this specific machine?

Yes, I called it RAM which is what the referrer had called it which is what you properly called it ;-). And yes, it's great to have but not a substitute for boot media which is why I'm still working this.

Nope, zilch clear reference to USB boot. As I posted initially, this is what the default BIOS stated on F12:

UEFI Boot: Secure Boot On:

Windows Boot Manager (thought I’d get a list but the machine booted as normal)

Onboard NIC – Ipv4

Onboard NIC – Ipv6

Other Options:

Setup

Diagnostics

Peripheral Device Setting (OPROM Setting)

Change boot mode setting (I selected this, then Legacy, then USB, but the result was ‘Operational system not found’

>>>then for some reason that flash drive isn't set up for UEFI booting>>>>>

1. The drive is a 32GB SanDisk no more than 8 months old from a Costco 3 pack.

2. Interesting...when the Dell wouldn't boot I tested it with my Lenovo P50. It was strange that the machine's F12 opened right up to a seemingly old fashioned screen with only a few options, one of which was USB HDD. Is it possible that the P50 'sensed' something about the flash drive?

3. If the flash drive isn't setup for UEFI then are the instructions someone else had given to format as FAT32, mark active, copy an ISO to it, etc what needs to be done?

I setup the Dell with the Reflect boot to RAM boot option and it worked like a charm. Now I don't have the pressure to get the thing working properly and can focus on the USB boot problem.

Mark

The Rescue Media Wizard in Macrium Reflect will set up the drive for UEFI booting as long as you check the box to enable that.  Sorry, I should have made it clearer for how I meant for you to achieve that. :)  It does involve formatting as FAT32, and there's no need to mark it as active for UEFI since that's only used for Legacy Booting, although it's a good idea if you want a "combo BIOS/UEFI" boot media.  UEFI booting instead looks for a boot file at a standardized path on the drive, which again Reflect should set up for you.  If you rebuild your Rescue Media with that option checked, have the flash drive connected from the moment the system starts, and it STILL doesn't list the USB drive under the UEFI boot options, I'm not sure what to tell you.  Maybe update the BIOS if you haven't already?

What is this "RAM boot" option you referred to?  Are you talking about the "Boot menu recovery option" in Reflect?  That's convenient, but since it relies on booting from files that are stored on your internal drive, it only works while that drive and those files are intact, so that should be viewed more as an additional convenience rather than a full alternative to separate Rescue Media.

I found the Dell page, downloaded Detect. Every time I click on current system vs. original then detect a new page opens which is just the same page refreshed and back on original, go to current and we start all over again. I confirmed that detect is running.

I asked for drivers and updates. It listed ~4 all to do with Intel chipset etc, nothing about BIOS.

I decided to run the diagnostic while there. Is the BIOS check somewhere else?

I just go to support.dell.com and select the model of interest, but here's the link to the latest BIOS for your Inspiron 7537: www.dell.com/.../driversdetails

^ Did updating the BIOS allow the system to boot the Rescue Media in UEFI mode??  If so, awesome! :)

If not, then my Hail Mary suggestion is to try a different flash drive, especially if the one you're using is one of those "U3" flash drives that also mounts a virtual CD drive that contains some PortableApps software.  Those have been known to be problematic as boot devices.  If you're not using a U3 flash drive, then you shouldn't HAVE to use a different flash drive, but doing so may resolve whatever issue with that BIOS is preventing you from using the one you've been working with.

If even that doesn't solve it, then if you've already rebuilt the flash drive's Rescue Media files by re-running the Rescue Media Wizard using WinPE 10 (click "Change PE Version" at the first step of the wizard to check this) and then making absolutely sure to check the option to make it a multi-boot MBR/UEFI drive, the last things to verify are that the drive ended up formatted as FAT32 and that there's a file called "bootx64.efi" under the \EFI\Boot folder on the drive.  If those items check out and you've once again made sure that your system's boot policy is UEFI mode (Secure Boot on/off doesn't matter, but you may as well have it on) and you STILL can't get it to boot, then I'm totally at a loss here -- especially if that same flash drive can boot in UEFI mode on some other system.

Per the installer, the machine is the same BIOS version as the update (who knew). The installer recommended against installing and I agreed/No and Exit.

I will go through your checklist later this morning.

I think that question may have just solved the problem.  Are you just copying the ISO file onto a flash drive and expecting to boot it that way?  That's not how it works.  The ISO is handy for keeping an archive of the Rescue Media files somewhere, but you'd have to EXTRACT it onto a properly prepped flash drive if you wanted to actually use it, or of course burn it to disc.  If you've been dealing with the ISO thus far, at the end of the Rescue Media wizard, instead choose to have it build straight to the flash drive rather than spitting out an ISO.

Not so easy. I haven't been using the ISO format but doing so had been suggested on the Win10 forum. Have Reflect generate an ISO file on the main drive, mount the ISO, copy it to a FAT32 USB and try that as USB boot media.

>>>.and that there's a file called "bootx64.efi" under the \EFI\Boot folder on the drive>>>

But we're still on board with the idea of using an ISO file this time?