Dell Inspiron 5675 DIY help

DIY Community Support
1

My first try to make a server by using a Dell Inspiron 5675.

I have tried to flash my balena etcher loaded thumb drive but Inspiron ignores it every time. Just need a little nudge to get over my computer knuckle dragger status

  • AMD Ryzen 5 1400 quad core processor
  • Windows 10
  • 32 GB ram

Questions:

  1. What type/size of drive do I flash to with balena etcher?
    a. Some are giving these very large ssd, flash or thumb drives that make no sense. Dont I only need a thumb drive that is the size of the startos file since it is being flashed to the computer drive at boot?
    b. Once I have flashed startos to computer drive via BIOS set to boot off of legacy. Can I throw away the thumb drive? Feels like I am missing a step here.
    c. Storage: lots of info out there.
  • Motherboard has three options:
  1. M2.1 SATA SSD slot
  2. M2.2 PCIe/NVME SSD
  3. Standard SATA HD slots
    Which is type best to use in server situation and how much (more is better)?
    Can I use more than one drive in a server setup with StartOS?

I have upgraded the BIOS to latest Dell version for this motherboard.
I have removed the graphics card, monitor, mouse, keyboard, and disabled the wifi.

You cannot hurt my feelings. Thank you!

2

1a. You will need a USB drive of at least 8GB in size
1b. You may have to experiment with your BIOS (See DIY forum posts and guide link)
1c. Depends on your use case. More is always better

  1. NVME is typically used and your best choice. You can have a one drive setup. Or you can have one drive for the OS and a separate drive for the data. At this time you can not have multiple data drives.

Read these guides carefully and see if they answer most of your questions. And check the known Good hardware and DIY section of this forum for additional insight.

https://docs.start9.com/0.3.5.x/flashing-guides/os-x86

https://docs.start9.com/0.3.5.x/diy/diy-x86

3

Thanks Rick for the quick response.

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4

F12 on startup will get you to the boot menu on most, if not all Dell’s. If the flash drive was created correctly, and plugged in to a good USB port, it will show in that menu.

5

Thank you.

For some reason on my dell it is F2…

I keep getting this when starting up with USB flash installed on BIOS legacy enabled USB startup:

"CLIENT MAC ADDR: 8C EC 4B 4A 30 31 GUID: 44454C4C-4D00-1056-8054.
PXE-E53: No boot filename received

PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM.
No bootable device – Insert boot disk and press any key"

Any suggestions?

6
  1. Check options in BIOS to see if you can adjust boot order
  2. Try to reflash your USB or replace it. Sometimes it can be corrupted
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7

So back from my taking time off from being frustrated with a DIY:

  1. I finally got the Dell Inspiron to “start” taking the StartOS USB flash. Big victory for me. :slight_smile:

  • I did this by setting the BIOS to boot UEFI vice Legacy (read this in another post from a Dell person). This computer will NOT boot from USB via Legacy even if set to USB boot.

  • Since set to boot via UEFI, I had to do disconnect the SATA drive to keep the computer from loading windows so it will boot from USB to flash to the Crucial 500 GB P2 M.2 NVME. If i get this working I will get another SSD.

So far so good:

image

gets to this point and everything goes blank…computer still running but blank screen.

image

It is loading fast so taking pics as it scrolls…it does appear that there is some firmware that is failing to load in the above script…may be normal since it continues on.

Note 1: I have tried to flash with several different USBs to make sure it was not a corrupt flash load

Note 2: I am running server in kiosk mode. Cannot see the server on my LAN with other devices.

Any suggestions?

8

I figured it out. Had the NIC card disabled in BIOS!

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