BIOS keeps 'fogetting' hard drive order

£15 · 18 Oct 2015 at 17:22

I've installed a SSD in my dad's old (4-5 yrs) Dell desktop and put Windows 7 on it. There is also a SATA DVD & HDD in the tower.

SATA mode is IDE; the only alternative is RAID.

Every time the PC power cycles I get a dos screen saying there's no boot device, but lists the SSD (with the HDD & DVD). I go back into the BIOS and the SSD has dropped down the list of bootable drives again.

I can move it back up to #1 and the PC boots. Or, I can F12 and manually select the SSD.

I've changed the battery and updated to the most recent bios available (from Dell's site).

I'd rather not remove the SSD and put the OS on the HDD, but if I can't resolve the issue I may have to. Could it just be that the mobo doesn't support SSD?

I wondered if anyone had any suggestions?

Mel_P · 18 Oct 2015 at 17:25

If you go into disk manager what is the order of the Drives? Is the SSD Drive 0?

If not perhaps if you change the leads around to put the SSD as drive 0 then it will always go to this?

Mel

NeoVo · 18 Oct 2015 at 17:37

Change the boot priority so the SSD is above the HDD.
Or prevent the HDD as a boot device.

£15 · 18 Oct 2015 at 21:54

SSD is SATA 0.

I have set SSD above the HDD and removed floppy and DVD from the equation.

However, the problem persists - after a reboot, I get the 'no boot device screen' and going into the bios I discover the SSD has dropped back down below the HDD.

NeoVo · 18 Oct 2015 at 23:27

Did you clone the data (if so, how?) or did you fresh install?

£15 · 19 Oct 2015 at 17:23

It was a fresh install.

lucifer-mnm · 20 Oct 2015 at 11:07

What happens with just the ssd connected? Does it boot then?

koolpc · 20 Oct 2015 at 11:14

Change the battery on the mobo. Maybe the one you replaced it with is faulty too

Mel_P · 20 Oct 2015 at 12:16

lucifer-mnm said:
What happens with just the ssd connected? Does it boot then?

Yes - check in Disk Manager that the other HDDs do not say things like "boot" or "active" - they may contain part of the setup if they were connected when windows was installed?

russell664 · 23 Oct 2015 at 09:41

Out of question, I assume you have tried resetting CMOS?

Also, have you considered changing the BIOS battery? When it forgets the drive order, does it also forget the time?