Access to BIOS settings...

[hubner]

I would get a usb thumb drive, put a bootable OS on it eg Linux, then remove the Win 10 hard drive from the laptop.

Then plug in the thumb drive and turn on the laptop. It should go through the attached devices and look for something bootable. Since only the thumb drive is attached, it should boot from that.

If that works, then try again with the SSD.

[PaulF]

f2 = no cigar.  In Win10 settings I seached for BIOS - then Advanced startup options, including UEFi settings.  SSD connected with USB SATA cable still not visible in boot options, though I can see SSD folders on Win10 desktop.Think something's up with the SSD, which is not allowing it to be selectable as boot option.   No idea what though.  May have to wipe & do warranty return.
 

You need to press the <f2> almost but, not quite, as soon as you turn the power on, if you see a Windows screen it’s too late. From memory a message pops up in the top right corner telling you the key to press but you need to be quick. Seems to me that the faster machines get the smaller the window of opportunity to access the bios gets.

[PaulF]

f2 = no cigar.  In Win10 settings I seached for BIOS - then Advanced startup options, including UEFi settings.  SSD connected with USB SATA cable still not visible in boot options, though I can see SSD folders on Win10 desktop.Think something's up with the SSD, which is not allowing it to be selectable as boot option.   No idea what though.  May have to wipe & do warranty return.
 

You need to press the <f2> almost but, not quite, as soon as you turn the power on, if you see a Windows screen it’s too late. From memory a message pops up in the top right corner telling you the key to press but you need to be quick. Seems to me that the faster machines get the smaller the window of opportunity to access the bios gets.

Just did some experimenting on my Dell a year old-ish XPS. After several frustrating attempts what I found worked was rapidly pressing the <f2> as soon as I turned power on rather than holding it down.

[Lightning Phil]

^^^ See Feanor’s last reply

[andyoxon]

Cheers Paul.

Getting into the BIOS is nothing to do with windows 10.
The BIOS options are long before windows starts to load.

If you are in Windows  (or any OS ) you are far past where you need to be.
The boot options are set up in the BIOS setup which you need to get into *before* windows starts loading.
What is the exact model of Dell you are working with?

In relation to being unable to boot the SSD in place of the HDD, that will most likely be that the SSD is not correctly formatted with the necessary boot code.
How did the SSD get it's windows install onto it?
Did you use some imaging software to copy the old HDD to the new SSD?
However it was done, I expect it was done wrong.

I've been able to restart into the BIOS / UEFI settings from Window 10.  The SSD is not listed in boot sequence options, though the USB pen recovery drive (made after first installing the SSD) is listed as "USB: partition 1".

The 500 GB SSD (Crucial MX) I cloned from slow 1TB HDD, with "Acronis True Image for Crucial" software, worked fine for 6 months then laptop stopped with BSOD (error: 0xc000021a) & couldn't boot. 

With the laptop (mini-ao's) booted on the reinstalled, original 1TB HDD, I can see the SSD attached with USB cable, though can't access file info (not that I need to as backed up anyway).

So I could re-clone the now updated original 1Tb HDD onto a new/replacement SSD...

edit.

[Afasoas]

Cheers Paul.

Getting into the BIOS is nothing to do with windows 10.
The BIOS options are long before windows starts to load.

If you are in Windows  (or any OS ) you are far past where you need to be.
The boot options are set up in the BIOS setup which you need to get into *before* windows starts loading.
What is the exact model of Dell you are working with?

In relation to being unable to boot the SSD in place of the HDD, that will most likely be that the SSD is not correctly formatted with the necessary boot code.
How did the SSD get it's windows install onto it?
Did you use some imaging software to copy the old HDD to the new SSD?
However it was done, I expect it was done wrong.

I've been able to restart into the BIOS / UEFI settings from Window 10.  The SSD is not listed in boot sequence options, though the USB pen recovery drive (made after first installing the SSD) is listed as "USB: partition 1".

The 500 GB SSD (Crucial MX) I cloned from slow 1TB HDD, with "Acronis True Image for Crucial" software, worked fine for 6 months then stopped with BSOD (couldn't boot). 

With the laptop (mini-ao's) booted on the reinstalled 1TB HDD, I can see the SSD attached with USB cable, though can't access file info (not that I need to as backed up anyway).

So I could re-clone the now updated 1Tb HDD onto a new/replacement SSD...

I suspect the SSD is missing the EFI boot partition.

Is the SSD larger or smaller than the HDD? Just to clarify, is it an NVMe/mSATA SSD?

[andyoxon]

...
I suspect the SSD is missing the EFI boot partition.

Is the SSD larger or smaller than the HDD? Just to clarify, is it an NVMe/mSATA SSD?

Not NVMe, standard SSD "3D NAND SATA" 0.5Tb, which was installed to replace v.slow 1Tb HDD.  SSD worked fine for 6 months, before BSOD occurred.

[rafletcher]

It would be nice if PC/motherboard/BIOS manufacturers but a bit more effort into the help text and documentation but please don't take my toys away.

I think you missed the point. No-one want to take your toys away, but swapping the boot drive should just be a straightforward option in settings, not something that requires delving into BIOS.

[andyoxon]

From Win10 settings under 'advanced startup' I can also see listed the USB recovery disk ("Partition 1: USB UEFI" - same as in BIOS settings) USB option, but not SSD (attached with SATA cable) USB option.

[Afasoas]

It would be nice if PC/motherboard/BIOS manufacturers but a bit more effort into the help text and documentation but please don't take my toys away.

I think you missed the point. No-one want to take your toys away, but swapping the boot drive should just be a straightforward option in settings, not something that requires delving into BIOS.

And I'd prefer there was not an API available to allow the software on the machine to do that, because (a) it will be broken at some point and (b) if it's not broken, someone somewhere will figure out how to exploit it.

You missed a key part of my point.

[Afasoas]

From Win10 settings under 'advanced startup' I can also see listed the USB recovery disk ("Partition 1: USB UEFI" - same as in BIOS settings) USB option, but not SSD (attached with SATA cable) USB option.

I'm surprised a BSOD itself would cause a storage drive to become unbootable. Do you have any recollection as to what caused the BSOD?

I think the first step is seeing what partitions are on that SSD. If you boot the laptop from the HDD with the SSD attached via USB, in Windows you can open the start menu, search it for diskmgmt.dsc.
Open diskmgmt.dsc (I think it's called and might display as Disk Management once you have searched dismgmt.dsc) and it should display all the disks attached to the machine and their partitions.

We are looking to see EFI System Partition (ESP) is present on the SSD.
If it is, the next step will be to inspect the Windows Boot Configuration Data (BCD) file and possibly repair it.

[Feanor]

Diskmgmt.msc, shirly?

[ian]

It would be nice if PC/motherboard/BIOS manufacturers but a bit more effort into the help text and documentation but please don't take my toys away.

I think you missed the point. No-one want to take your toys away, but swapping the boot drive should just be a straightforward option in settings, not something that requires delving into BIOS.

This, succinctly. There are many things more fun than trying to set the boot disk in BIOS remotely via a WhatsApp video conference. I apppreciate this worked in 1992, but it's 2022 and computers are consumer devices.

[Afasoas]

Diskmgmt.msc, shirly?

Yes. Thanks.

[Feanor]

Accessing BIOS settings from the comfort of a whizzy app running on the OS is predicated on having a bootable working OS.

As has been pointed out earlier, most people will never need to go near the BIOS.
Those that do, it is usually because they don't have a bootable working OS.
You need some means of accessing the BIOS in this case.

[Afasoas]

Accessing BIOS settings from the comfort of a whizzy app running on the OS is predicated on having a bootable working OS.

As has been pointed out earlier, most people will never need to go near the BIOS.
Those that do, it is usually because they don't have a bootable working OS.
You need some means of accessing the BIOS in this case.

There's a fair degree of needing to know and understand what is going on/what needs to be done in many of the scenarios where the boot order has to be changed. Data is precious after all.

[Polar Bear]

My pc was purposely built as a silent pc with no fans for the case, processor, graphics or any other reason.  On first startup the system showed an error and would not boot.  I had to go into bios to disable the fan headers as it was expecting fans to be attached so that was the default.

The machine has worked silently and without hiccup for three years now. 

[PaulF]

Every time I've had to access the BIOS it's been on a working computer and having a user friendly interface would have been much more helpful. Agree that BIOS should be there but as a tool of last resort rather than the only way of doing something.

[TheLurker]

....but it's (almost) 2022 and computers are consumer devices.

Sort of, but not quite.  It's sort of like motor cars.  The v. early ones were home-brew jobs put together out of whatever odds & sods were lying around in the parts (horse) trough, then we got early mass production and no two manufacturers had the same interface for controlling the damned things and as for part interchangeability?  Ha ha ha. Then things converged and we got cars that were almost but not quite proper consumer devices.  In car terms I think we've got to about the 1950s, at a push the 1960s, in the consumer computing world.  Things are mostly the same, but there are some still some oddballs pursuing weird solutions (Citroen == Apple? Discuss) but you've still got to do the computing equivalent of spending every sodding weekend crawling around under them getting grease embedded under your fingernails and barking your knuckles on siezed nuts and bolts to keep the bloody things running - some Mfrs being worse than others - and the service intervals are still dismally short.