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Fresh Win 7 64 SP1 install on UEFI MX100 SSD won't reboot without F12
I purchased a new Dell E5540 laptop that came with Win 8.1 Pro and a 500GB HDD. I wanted to install an SSD so I cloned the HDD to a Crucial MX100 512GB SSD using a standalone dock cloner. Win 8.1 started fine on the SSD but I wanted to enable AHCI in the BIOS, which I could never get working. I tried all the registry tricks but it would not find any bootable devices unless I returned BIOS to RAID from AHCI.
Screw it I thought, I will just load Win 7 Pro fresh and it will pick up the AHCI BIOS setting. This led me down a rabbits hole. I wasn't aware of the issues related to Secure Boot and Legacy vs UEFI before I started, so by trial and error I had to disable Secure Boot and enable Legacy Option ROMs in BIOS. Interestingly, Windows Setup would not boot off the legacy DVD, do I had to select UEFI DVD from the F12 boot menu for setup to begin.
From within Windows setup, when I got to the part about where to install Windows, I deleted all the partitions and dropped out to Shift-F10 and ran DISKPART and issued the CLEAN command. I then returned to Windows Setup and followed instructions to create a new GPT partition (which was successful and actually created three partitions). Windows Setup proceeded successfully, but the first time it rebooted itself to complete the setup, I got an error "No bootable devices found".
After cursing a lot, I found that if I manually select Windows Boot Manager or "UEFI Crucial 512..." from the F12 UEFI boot menu, Windows will start. But if I just let the machine boot itself, it reports no bootable disk found.
In the Dell 5540 BIOS, the Boot Sequence option has two choices to list available boot devices: Legacy and UEFI. When I select Legacy, I see Diskette, Internal HDD, USB Storage Device, CD/DVD, and Onboard NIC. When I select UEFI, I see Windows Boot Manager and UEFI: Crucial_CT512MX... When I set the Boot Sequence to use the UEFI mode and restart the machine, I get a message about no bootable device found, and when I select Legacy and restart the machine, I also get the no bootable device message. Only when I restart the machine and press F12 and manually select Windows Boot Manager or UEFI: Crucial_CT512MX... will it start Windows properly.
What is going on here? I have never had this much trouble installing Windows. Windows seemed to install correctly after it created the GPT partitions, so Windows AHCI must be working. I can't seem to get the correct settings configured to point to the boot process to the SSD drive by default. Am I missing something simple?
Any and all help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks