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April 3rd, 2024 15:00

Never ending cascade of failures trying to install OS

OK. I've got a Dell G15 5511. I decided to upgrade my 512 gb pm991a NVMe to a Crucial PCIe 3.0 NVMe M.2 ssd after the OG started failing. I migrated the OS to the new drive using Easus Partition Manager 16 Unlimited.

I removed the old drive and replaced with the new one and tried to restart. ABSOLUTELY nothing. No recovery options, no Dell support..nothing. I made sure it was installed correctly and was able to get it to give me the options of F1 for recovery F8 for boot and ESC for UEFI...however, F1 and F8 didn't work at all. I could get into bios, but the only boot options were "Boot" (Not Windows boot) and 2 drives with UEFI codes exactly the same except one had a 1 at the end and one had a 1 2 at the end. I tried every configuration possible and still..no joy.

I just moved to where I'm at so I didn't know anyone who had a pc that would allow me to create a windows PE disk or Dell recovery drive. I tried the library...where I could download the image, but was not allowed to install Etcher so I could burn it to a flash drive. Day 2 found me about to throw my laptop through the wall. I had an old lap[top that was having similar boot issues, however, for whatever reason, a miracle and it gave me the option to install a new OS on my OLD laptop. I did that, downloaded the Dell Recovery Assistant and installed a new OS on the old hard drive...because...again, I was trying to recover my cloned OS that had all of my data, settings, etc supposedly "backed up"

I got the Dell support assistant to install a fresh OS on the OG hard drive, with my intention being to get it up and running and then recover my backup. I figured maybe I could fix whatever the problem was with the booting of my new drive once I was in Windows. But No, The Dell Assistant will only fix the OS that the computer is operating with...which makes NO SENSE. Why can't I repair my backup OS?

So I decided that maybe with that last fix I could use my backup...of course not. I removed the og SSD and installed the new one. I still got the same thing, then when I installed the OG drive, it won't boot that one either now.

Suffice it to say..I have lost BOTH backups and Dell still won't recognize any of them. This is Day 5 without my computer. This software is absolutely useless! I finally was able to get the assistant working...but...of course...the repair option is greyed out (I can only assume because I'm out of warranty). Because that is what I NEEDED! So, I decided to do a reset. I plugged in 2 - 1 TB drives with a total of 4 partitions of which 500+ gigs was free on each one. So I was trying to backup the old OS (The one I've been trying to keep because it has EVERYTHING on it.). But....guess what? It won't let me backup to ANY of them because they are supposedly OS boot partitions (THEY ARE NOT, they are NTFS formatted drives with normal data stored on them. NO OS). I swapped out a total of 5 drives and it said all of them were OS partitions. At this point I decided to do a reset because that was my only option left. This is where I'm at now.  I'm on the Confirm your Reset page. I clicked the check mark box, chose a reason in the drop down, hit the Next button...and GUESS WHAT? NOTHING! I'VE GOT NOTHING! It's been sitting here for 2 hours doing absolutely nothing. No drives spinning, no flashes from the USB. NOTHING! All buttons are greyed out. I can't escape, or ctrl alt del, NOTHING! THAT DRIVE HAS ALL OF MY WORK FILES ON IT! Of course I'm out of warranty as of March 4, 2023so I don't expect any help will be forthcoming, Also judging by the amount of requests on here that haven't had a reply from anyone. The only replies I have seen, which comes MONTHS after the request are that they didn't provide their Machine ID or whatever it's called. So...on the small chance that anyone here will actually do their job.

<Profanity is never allowed on our Forum. DELL-Admin>

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April 4th, 2024 00:30

Thanks for the helpful advice. As usual, you guys hide behind technicalities rather than help your customers. Par for the course. Keep up the good work.

I mean I didn't think anyone would help me, I just posted this as a warning to future dell users that you could give absolutely zero  about your customer base once they are out of warranty. The software you provide is 100% useless. The help is non existent.

Go ahead, look in this forum alone, how many customers have cried out for help and either no one from dell shows up to help, or you use these cableman-esque technicalities for not helping because they didn't provide their service code. You  You wait until the user has long since given up on getting an answer and then jump in with "Well, we would help you and we messaged you, but since you didn't give us your user service tag...you can go  

You know many of these forum pleas for help have been marked as "solved"?

ZERO

Do you know a general percentage of how many had ANY replies at all...go ahead.

Look.

I'll wait.

Yeah like 95% don't even get a response from you. And, again, the only responses have been the canned you throw at them after they've given up. So....doing the math here...carry the two...yeah. it's 100% of the people that have asked for help were left with none.

So if I have to get your attention, maybe I will.

I'm pretty proud that I'm in that rarefied air of actually getting a quick response from the admins.

You know, I was coming here to apologize and explain that I have been trying to solve this problem for 5 days, barely getting any sleep watching you tube videos and reading forums, and when I posted that, my level of frustration was at a 15 out of 10, so I apologize for the way I had presented the problem, yada, yada, yada. I figured no one had probably even read it yet...since there seems to be no activity here.

Imagine my surprise when I saw that a dell rep had already commented. The cynicism  melted away. A new hope arose! Yeah. So, anyone reading this (if they even left it up), if you actually want someone to respond from Dell...just say h-e-double-hockey-sticks and they are right. on. top. of. that.

So, again, for future readers, let me regale you of the atrocities that occurred after I posted that. I know Chris could care less. He's too busy giving out demerits over on the gaming forum.

Picking up where I left off: I let it sit like that all day while I was at work. When I home, the laptop was off. So I started it up and we were back to the same shenanigans. I got into Bios to set the dell support assistant  recovery disk so that it would boot first....buuuuttt...guess what happened next? The Bios no longer recognizes the USB that had the dell support assistant recovery disk on it.

So, now I can't even get into any of my drives because the dell support assistant recovery disk has disappeared! It's MAGIC!

I'm sitting here typing this on a 15 year old laptop that can't even run the partition manager software I paid for that might be able to save me.  I put all my chips on Dell to pull out the win...SWING AND A MISS!

(edited)

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April 4th, 2024 03:21

Hello,

Let’s see if I can help.

There is a lot going on here, if I understand this correctly, you used  Easus Partition Manager to move your stuff from the old drive  to the new drive which resulted in no boot, no data on the new drive?

In that case welcome to the club, the same thing happened to me. Easus Partition Manager failed to transfer a working state to new drive no matter what. I just plugged the original drive back, booted back to windows and at least I was up and running on the old drive. Was that not an option for you?

Are you familiar with windows Iso and Rufus boot?

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