Win 8.1 recovery ... BIOS does not see HD on Dell

Prior to retirement, all the PCs where I worked were Dell. About 200 of them. We had very few failures and those were most often hard drives.

The F2 key gets you to the BIOS settings where one of the items lets you set the boot order. The F12 just gives a list of drives from which you select to boot from. It does not change the boot order.

I have three Dell computers - two desktops and one laptop. One desktop is seven years old and the other a year old. The laptop is five years old.

Only two hardware issues.
1. The RAM on the first desktop was flawed. Dell sent out a new chip at no cost to me.
2. The CPU fan was grinding on the first desktop during its third year. Dell replaced that at no cost to me.

That first Dell desktop was on XP but I reformatted the drives last year and upgraded to Windows 7, and it continues to run well.

Second desktop has had no issues whatsoever.

Laptop crashed once when an update started when we were travelling and we left the area before the update was complete. Now I make sure automatic updates are turned off when we travel. I was able to get the laptop functioning for the rest of the trip by using the recovery drive and then reloading my photo software.

When people ask me to help with computer problems, they're usually HPs or Acers.

1492 wrote:
I've had no issues with my DELL WIN 8 convertible notebook/tablet. In fact, its running pretty much flawless over the ACER it replaced, which was plagued by hardware quality issues more than anything else. I did make the DELL restore discs almost immediately, and created my own system image backup using the free AOMEI Backupper Standard, once all bloatware was removed. I also keep a 1TB 2.5" WD USB3 drive in my notebook case w/backups as my convertible has an internal SSD drive card. No complaints so far.

I do not get the reason there is an F2 and an F12 key to press during bootup. IIRC, there was a list of bootable devices in both, only the list in the F2 window does not show the DVD or HD drive, where F12 did. Also in F2 window thw UEFI is off and legacy on, or new HD won't boot. But I seem to recall the F12 saying something about secure boot is operating.

I've had no issues with my DELL WIN 8 convertible notebook/tablet. In fact, its running pretty much flawless over the ACER it replaced, which was plagued by hardware quality issues more than anything else. I did make the DELL restore discs almost immediately, and created my own system image backup using the free AOMEI Backupper Standard, once all bloatware was removed. I also keep a 1TB 2.5" WD USB3 drive in my notebook case w/backups as my convertible has an internal SSD drive card. No complaints so far.

1775 wrote:
Whenever someone tells me that they are having a problem with a computer, it is almost always a Dell. If you got to a clean Win 8.0 install, then upgrade again to Win 8.1 and install all of your software. Once you get this working again, get yourself a portable USB hard drive and good backup software like Acronis True Image. Make regular full or incremental backups of all of your hard drives (if you have more than one) and then you will never have this problem again. You just boot to the restore DVD that you create - no need for Windows - with the USB drive connected and restore your hard drive to the most recent backup.

Thank you so muc, 1775. This is the META knowledge I asked for...I needed to know it wasn't all my inexperience. I needed confirmation that the Dell-Windows8 product was flawed, and that I had not missed a major point.

Our data needs are quite small, and a simple couple of duplicate USB sticks can suffice...

I would rather crush the malfunctioning computer than insure it. I think this is what Chromebooks are all about. If only they could develop their low vision accessibility to the level that the government required of Microsoft and Apple back in the day...

Thanks for your insight, it IS appreciated.

Whenever someone tells me that they are having a problem with a computer, it is almost always a Dell. If you got to a clean Win 8.0 install, then upgrade again to Win 8.1 and install all of your software. Once you get this working again, get yourself a portable USB hard drive and good backup software like Acronis True Image. Make regular full or incremental backups of all of your hard drives (if you have more than one) and then you will never have this problem again. You just boot to the restore DVD that you create - no need for Windows - with the USB drive connected and restore your hard drive to the most recent backup.

sue.t wrote:
This series of self-help from Dell doesn't help?
http://www.dell.com/support/troubleshooting/us/en/19/kcs/kcsarticles/articleview?docid=598682

There are scattered bits of help in most of the links at the Dell site you note. I did use Dell help sites and a few videos back when the HD crashed.

We expected the Dell Recovery Disc they sent us would lead to a factory Dell OEM install, but it did a clean W8. So the videos we saw were all off.

I think the upgrade to W8.1 we had done many months ago from its original W8 config was something Dell did not properly update their Recovery Media...

There were no instructions as to what needed to be done to simultaneously install a new HD, as well as get some sort of backup media created.

Your BIOS obviously recognizes the hard drive because you were able to do a restore and boot the computer.

As to the difference in boot time, some things that could affect it is perhaps your first drive was 7200rpm and the replacement was a 5400rpm. You may have been resuming from hibernate or sleep previously and are doing a full boot now.

Your backup most likely backed up only one partition and not the whole drive, thus no recovery partition on the new drive.

This series of self-help from Dell doesn't help?
http://www.dell.com/support/troubleshooting/us/en/19/kcs/kcsarticles/articleview?docid=598682

Found that FN+on/off button booted to the Dell PSA diagnostic we had used to 1st get a confirmation that the original HD failed.

Running PSA this time found the new HD was not set, but then it corrected that and it now shows in a list that the F12 key shows at bootup.

The F2 key, brings up the old DOS style BIOS. Here, it does not work if we try to enable UEFI, and there is no list of hardware devices should you want to re-order their boot preference.

Boots from hibernate in 30-40 sec, and Martha seems to think it booted faster back when UEFI worked.

Sleep works, but cannot seem to stop a hibernate/shutdown(?) after leaving it unattended for several hours.

Seems to be stable otherwise, and I hope it continues to.