L401x no boot from usb external optical drive

hello,

i have been trying to boot the system from a usb external optical drive (2x different models on 2x different L401x systems) without success.

i have set boot devices in bios (both latest version A06), and i have tried all usb ports.

i have successfully booted via both usb external optical drives on other systems including xps L502x, L701x, L702x, and various desktop systems without problems.

the usb external optical drives power on when the L401x systems are powered on, but will not boot from them and are not listed as boot devices if using F12 key for boot options either from dell splash screen....

reason i want to use usb external optical drive is installation of 2nd HDD caddy replacing internal optical drive.

if anyone has any insight i would be greatful.

thank you,

justin

 

hello,

has anyone had success booting from an external optical drive with the L401x at all ???

please let me know.

thank you,

justin

 

Not sure if this is any help, but if you have USB 3 ports, you'll need to make sure you don't use one of them to connect the boot drive. They need drivers that aren't available until Windows loads.

Also, a good bit of diagnostic info to know for diagnostice purposes: can you boot from a USB thumb drive? If so, but the optical drive won't work in the same port, then the problem would seem to be the optical drive.

Make sure the thumb drive is properly configure to boot by testing it on another PC first.

 

hello,

i have booted successfully from a usb flash drive with the system. still not able to boot from a usb external optical drive. no usb 3.0 ports on the L401x.

i guess a flash drive will be okay for my application..

thank you,

justin

 

Are you certain of that? I boot from USB 3 ports on my XPS 15.

 

Huh. I'm fairly certain, but it's been a while since I tried.

I know that you need to load the Renesas (sp?) driver to make them work within Windows. E.g., When I boot to Win PE, which doesn't include that driver, my USB mouse doesn't work in a USB 3 port, but it does in the others.

When I need to boot from a USB thumb, I use one of the standard ports because I remember some problem with the USB 3 ports. When booting from the thumb, I use Pstart in conjuction with a cmd file that enumerates all the drive letters to locate the letter with the thumb drive. The problem I recollect may have been that the command file did not find the thumb drive on any letter.

I'll try it when I get home this evening and let you know.

 

OK, that's exactly what the problem was. I can boot from the USB 3.0 port, but for some reason the thumb drive does not appear on a drive letter (or any other way I can find).

When I use the same thumb drive and boot from a USB 2.0 port, the Wim appears properly on F:. I use a WIM created with Windows AIK that starts a tool called pstart.exe rather than opening a command window.

I created it a couple years ago. Someday I'll investigate it and see if I can make it work in a USB 3.0 port.

Meanwhile, I appologize for providing mis-information.