Could it be that the computer is trying to boot from the hdd and that's why its failing to find it and the boot manager keeps switching? Definitely. One of my laptops normally boots from its internal drive. I use an external USB hard drive for backups. If I forget to disconnect that USB hard drive when I'm done, next time when I try to boot, the laptop tries to boot from the USB hard drive and fails because there is no bootable OS on it. I get an error message about lack of boot partition, at which point I disconnect the USB drive and then boot the laptop normally.
I have an Alienware Aurora R13 with a SSD and an external HDD that is used for storage. For two months now whenever I boot up my computer it goes to Alienware diagnostics and says no hard drive detected. I found out this is because my BIOS boot order was out of order Nic ip4, Nic ip6 and Windows Boot Manager, when I put Windows Boot Manager at the top it seemed to have fixed the problem. However now it keeps going back to the first order whenever I power it up and putting the Windows Boot Manager at the bottom. How to I fix this so Windows Boot Manager is permanently at the top. Other Info, in Bios First HDD it says none, even when HDD is plugged in and I can still use the drive when on desktop.
Aurora R13, BIOS boot order keeps changing