I have a Dell desktop PC that is about 6-7 years old. It has an Intel Core i7-9700 processor, 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB SSD hard drive.

Yesterday, I was scrolling online and it froze. At first I thought it might be the mouse as it is a well-used wireless one. Nope, nothing wrong with it. After about 30 seconds to a minute, the screen totally changed showing a message from Dell with an error code and other info. It was saying that it could not detect my hard drive and to use my mobile device to scan the QR code on the screen. That took me to Dell Support which then informed me that, based on the info passed to it, my SSD was completely obsolete and my computer was WAY out of warranty. Well hell, I already knew that and declined to look at "options".

I then pushed the power button on the PC to turn it off and reboot. It came up with a black screen with the following message on it:

>>Checking for Media Presence......
>>Media Present......
>>Start PXE over IPv4. Press ESC key to abort PXE boot.

It didn't seem to be doing anything so I pressed ESC. That took me to a screen with several different "windows" showing available options. I chose to proceed to Windows 11. It did something but then took me back to the message screen shown above. I pressed ESC again wondering if it would put me in some sort of loop but it actually went into Windows and ran fine after that. Turned it off last night and when I went to start it this morning, it gave the same black screen with that message. Pressing ESC caused it to boot to Windows and it has run fine all day. Apparently, this is my new normal.

My question is, do I need to worry about anything? Was there some weird glitch that caused it to momentarily not see the SSD hard drive? Or (tinfoil hat on) was this some weird ploy by Dell to get me to look at a new one?

I don't really need a new one but I did look today and I can get a much better processor and 1 TB of modern SSD storage for less than what I paid for this one. It is tempting.

Back Up Your DATA Now!

I would venture to say that either your SSD is failing, or your Motherboard is failing.

What type of SSD; NVMe or SATA? I'd install Crystal Disk Info and see what that says about your SSD and it's current health. Once you've got that info, you can better determine your next steps.

My SSD is NVMe. I downloaded the Crystal Diskinfo and it says that the health is at 86% = Good.

I hate to think that either the SSD or Motherboard is failing. It seems they should last longer than that but this was my first PC with a SSD hard drive, so what do I know? I don't have time to back up my data tonight so it will have to wait until tomorrow.

Between the wife and I we have had about 5 dell desk/laptops.
Had problems with all of them.

I purchased mine in 2009. As you can see, I'm still using it with no problems other than having to replace the hard drive a couple of times.

My last two Dell Desktops failed unexpectedly.
I lost data the first time.
I was much better prepared when the second Dell unit failed.
The machine I'm sitting in front of now while typing isn't a Dell.
They are dead to me now.