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February 20th, 2023 07:00
Many duplicate boot devices
We see some strange behavior on the precision 3660 model. On each reboot, a duplicate boot device is created and added to the boot device list. After a certain amount of reboots, the boot device list is so long that we don't even see the pxe boot option anymore (even when scrolling all the way down). Resetting the BIOS removes the duplicates, but still each subsequent reboot adds another duplicate of the same boot device (a samsung NVME ssd).
At one point I couldn't even launch the one-time boot menu, supposedly because there were so many boot device entries.
This happens on multiple devices of this model.
I will do some more tests and take screenshots.
In the meantime, has anyone experienced this behavior before?
asGred
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February 23rd, 2023 04:00
Thanks, I just checked and there is only 1 EFI partition.
We use intel RST and RAID 1 over 2x 512GB NVME drives. There is also a 3rd hard disk installed, as seen in the screenshots.
Here is how the duplicate boot entries look like:
However dell just released a new bios update 2.1.0 for the precision 3660. I installed it on the machine where I took above screenshots, then did a bios reset to remove all duplicate entries. Now there are no more duplicates created, even after many reboots / pxe boots.
So fingers crossed that this is solved - even without anything matching in the update release notes
https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=rwngv&oscode=wt64a&productcode=precision-3660-workstation
JOcean
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February 20th, 2023 09:00
Just a thought here but if you are on a network server, since you mentioned booting the pxe option, is it possible that the system is detecting every NVMe SSD on the network and continually adding it during the boot operation?
asGred
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February 20th, 2023 23:00
Thanks but that's not how pxe works.
Chino de Oro
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February 21st, 2023 01:00
I'm making a wild guess here and just needing to confirm. Can you check the boot drive (Samsung NVMe SSD) to see if it has multiple .EFI partitions being created as well?
Chino de Oro
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February 23rd, 2023 05:00
Thanks for your response with screenshots. I was guessing multiple boot partitions would have caused BIOS to see multiple drives. But it was the Intel RSTe caused multiple arrays reading. If the cause of problem could be isolated, it would lead to solution.
However, I am glad that you resolved the issue with a new BIOS update. You can mark your own thread as solution to close this thread and it may provide helpful into to others with similar issue.
deladatu
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December 14th, 2024 15:33
@asGred Clicking on your screenshots doesn't maximize them, it just shows them as the same size tiny thumbnail in a pop-up modal window. I can't tell if you uploaded tiny pics, or the forum minimized them, or the forum has a bug.
I'm currently getting duplicate boot devices in UEFI boot manager, like "Windows Boot Manager" twice; I can't tell which refers to what. I only have 1 drive in the computer (default as shipped). I don't know what selecting each one will do.
(edited)