Windows 10: W10 Pro 20H2 image works on some Dell E6420(s) but not others

TL;DR:
Dell says the E6420 does NOT support W10. Is it possible that some of the early builds have some component (SATA controller???) that is incompatible with W10??? This is my best guess at this point, but then again I also have E6410s running W10 without problem.
This is long winded. Please bear with me as I am trying to give all the information I have. Also, I am new here, so if I'm missing something, please let me know and I will try to do it correctly. Thanks.

I have been dealing with PCs for an all volunteer non-profit for several years. They have 16 Dell E6420s which were purchased refurbished with Win 7 Pro about 3-4 years ago. They want to upgrade to W10 which I am trying to do.

I also have a Dell E6420 purchased refurbished about the same time from the same source. I upgraded my Dell E6420 to W10 Pro a couple of months ago as a trial run and it seems to be running fine. It is currently on 20H2 (19042.630). I don't actually use it every day as I have a couple of Dell E6330s and E6430s which I use more often. But, I am using it to type this.

In past I have had good luck with the E6330s and E6430s using Acronis 2019 or 2021 or Acronis WD Edition to clone disks and just change system name etc. under W10. They are also all running 20H2 at this point.

Now to the problem. When I clone the my E6420 500GB disk (HDD) to one of the non-profit's E6420 250GB disks (HDD) (and I have tried both Acronis 2021 and Acronis WD Edition), it will run fine in my E6420. When I stick it in one of the non-profits E6420s, it goes into Automatic Repair which eventually fails.

If I go to command prompt via advanced options then C: looks fine, but D: (main partition) shows up as raw. CHKDSK D: /F recovers the data after "The first NTFS boot sector is unreadable or corrupt."; "Reading second NTFS boot sector instead." If I try to reboot in the non-profit's E6420, I get exactly the same results. But, if I do the CHKDSK /F and put it back in my E6420, the image still works fine. The image will also work in an E6430. I have tried this with multiple disks configured for both AHCI and RAID and always get the same results over the last 48 hours or so. I have googled this error and not found anything that seem relevant to me.

Actually, the cloning is a red herring, I get the exact same results if I take the 500GB disk out of my E6420 and put it in one of the non-profits E6420s. So, this does NOT seem to be a sector size / disk geometry problem etc.

I have tried this with 2 of the 16 E6420s from the non-profit so far. The failure mode on the non-profit's E6420 is always the same - automatic repair which fails and "The first NTFS boot sector is unreadable or corrupt."

Now, the machines are not exactly identical but they are very close.
All bios A22 (OK, just noticed this isn't the latest, but I can't see anything in the release notes for A23, A24, and A25 that should affect this)
All i5-2520M @ 2.50GHz (actually the E6430 mentioned above is 3 GHz)
Mine 8GB DDR3-1333 non-profits 4GB DDR3-1333 (this really can't affect this, can it?)
>>>>> Mine Ship Date 23 OCT 2012 non-profits Ship Date 22 AUG 2011 and 17 NOV 2011 <<<<<
(Build date is general a couple of days or week before. I'm using mine at the moment, so it is hard to check exact buld date.)
My E6420 does not have the NVIDIA chip, but the two from the non-profit that I have tried so far do have the NVIDA chip. But, My E6430 does have the NVIDIA chip. So, I don't see how that can be the cause of this and anyway how does a graphics chip cause NTFS corruption?
There may also be minor differences with the WIFI or BlueTooth adapter.
All disks are WD Black 7200 RPM HDD.

As I said above Dell says the E6420 does NOT support W10. Is it possible that some of the early builds have some component (SATA controller???) that is incompatible with W10??? This is my best guess at this point, but then again I also have E6410s running W10 without problem.

Any ideas?

In the mean time I will try upgrading the BIOS to the latest (but I don't understand why that would matter on some E6420s and not others) and probably also try some of the 14 other E6420 from the non-profit to see if I can find a more conclusive build date correlation. It may be next weekend before I have any major news as I have paid work to do also.

Thanks.

PS All references to W10 are W10 Pro and the disks are MBR not UEFI.

PPS Dell Service Tags available if needed; I know Dell and some forums are twitchy about publicly posting service tags.

- - - Updated - - -

I have confirmed that my system image works in another E6420 with 4GB of memory and BIOS A21. So the memory size the BIOS version seem to be eliminated as possible causes of the problem.

- - - Updated - - -

OK. I have confirmed the system image works in a Dell E6420 with an NVIDIA chip. So that is eliminated as the cause of the problem.

- - - Updated - - -

One thing I noticed is the two machines that fail to boot have COMPUTRACE enabled. I don't know if that can be affecting this. Investigating that and the build dates are planned.

:)

 

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Thanks for the information.

I have checked that link you have provided for troubleshooting Bluetooth connection issues in Windows 10 but it did not help.

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