XPS 8930, cannot boot from an external drive

Hi

I would unplug the boot device if possible, and try and let the machine POST and then report some kind of error, which would lead me to believe that it is not a BIOS problem.

ELSE

IF I was then going to try and flash the bios, I would want a USB with an OS on it, W10 or W11 or even FreeDos, and add in BOTH the .exe and .rcv files.

With W10 or W11 on the USB I would navigate to the REPAIR and troubleshooting menu (not installation) and try the options to fix problems.

If in doubt please ask.

Re:  Is the System Bios Recovery Process the same as the BIOS Flash? Or is it something different?

No, they are different.  For BIOS recovery, you hold CTRL + Esc keys to trigger the process.  It will flash BIOS using recovery image on the boot drive's hidden partition or using a USB drive that holds a .rcv file.

For BIOS flash menu, you must enter one time boot menu via F12 at power on.  Select BIOS Flash Update and browse to a BIOS image .exe file you put on a FAT32 formatted USB drive. 

@anne_droid​ Thank you for your response.

I tried your suggestion of booting with no drive connected. I get a black screen with a flashing cursor in the top left corner. That's it. I expected to get some sort of error about no bootable device found.

The issue I'm trying to fix is not being able to boot from an external drive. I've tried Win 11 Install and Recovery drives, plus FreeDOS.  I've also tried various ports, both USB 2 and 3, front and back panel.

I see the LED on the drive flash when I select it as the boot device in BIOS and click OK, but then nothing happens. To me, this is a BIOS issue (or some other hardware issue). 

Installed BIOS on this machine is 1.1.24, current level is 1.1.31 so I'm hoping  with flashing / updating the BIOS maybe there's a fix for this issue someplace in all those BIOS updates. 

@Chino de Oro Thanks for the info. It took some fiddling with the Boot settings before it recognized the USB drive to flash the bios. I was able to upgrade from 1.1.24 to 1.1.28, but the machine will still not boot from a USB drive. I tried both a Win11 recovery usb and a Win11 Install USB.  Any suggestions that might fix this?

(At this point, I'm just trying to help my friend get a working PC.  This Windows system is corrupted, and he does not know his BitLocker code. So, just want to format and start over, but I can't do this since it won't boot from USB.)

Mahalo, Harry Z

For the hardware, replace a new coin cell battery and clear the system CMOS using jumper.  That will trigger message at boot to correct date and time and given access to enter setup (BIOS).

For software and firmware, the Bitlocker encrypted drive added issue to the BIOS firmware update and probably was the cause of the issue in the first place.  To confirm, temporarily remove boot drive from the system and install a new SSD to test with BIOS firmware update and performing a clean Windows installation. 

@Haole Boy​ 

Hi

Can I suggest Ventoy?

Giving you With/Without Secure Boot and Legacy MBR or uEFI GPT choices.

Then surely one will work?

@Chino de Oro​ thanks for the info. I tried your suggestions and neither one helped. At this point, we are abandoning this machine and starting over with a new laptop.

@anne_droid​ thanks for the suggestion, but as mentioned above, this machine is not worth any more effort. We've moved on to a new laptop.