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April 10th, 2025 19:48
R540 No boot device available
I have a Poweredge R540 rack server that has (2) virtual arrays: 1 is (2) x 256GB SSD in RAID1 for the OS, then a RAID5 Array for Storage (This is being used as a camera surveillance server)
It will not boot into Windows. I get "No boot device available . Current boot mode is set to BIOS. Please ensure compatible bootable media is available."
I have reseated the riser card, no change in behavior.
I've attached screenshots of the error message received upon bootup along with a TSR report: TSR20250410151044_815XD33.zip <Embedded URL removed due to privacy>
Any assistance is greatly appreciated! 
No Events found!
DELL-Joey C
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April 11th, 2025 02:37
Hi,
The error code 2000:0251 on a Dell PowerEdge R540 indicates that the event log has not been checked lately. This error typically appears when running the ePSA (Enhanced Pre-boot System Assessment) diagnostics.
Do you use boot mode of UEFI for your OS? Can you check the the F11 boot manager, if the BOSS card is listed to be boot from? https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/poweredge-r540/per540_bios_pub/viewing-boot-manager?guid=guid-27c038b5-7632-468e-a9fc-a67bbfeeaad8&lang=en-us
In the TSR log, it looks like the BOSS card is having an issue on the mainboard slot. I'm unsure if it's possible for you to swap slots, according to the installation guide recommendation, to swap Slot 3 and 2 as Slot 2 is the GPU card.
In addition, the server's hardware firmware is out dated. It would be recommended to update them.
Jay487
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April 10th, 2025 20:10
I should add that I've reseated the BOSS card that is inserted into the Riser card as well.
Jay487
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April 10th, 2025 20:37
When running diagnostics I get this error:
Jay487
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April 11th, 2025 12:15
@DELL-Joey C Hi Joey, Thank you for the response. Interestingly enough, I got into Boot Manager and it did show the BOSS card, so I tried to boot from it, and I'm now into Windows for the first time since troubleshooting
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I guess I'm even more confused now - either its an intermittent issue and I got lucky, or the hardware may not be faulty. Why would it not be booting from the BOSS card on its own? Are there additional diagnostics I can run to check the hardware?
I'm going to update BIOS and drivers through the Dell website as you suggested while I can.
Any guidance on next steps would be very much appreciated.
Thanks again!
Jay487
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April 11th, 2025 14:50
So, it seemed to reliably boot into Windows by manually going into Boot Manager and selecting the BOSS controller. I looked around in BIOS and saw the Boot Order Sequence was out of order and it was trying to boot from the RAID5 storage array first instead.
Not sure how that happened, but after correcting the boot order the issue seems to be resolved.
Thank you so much for your help!!!