M14X-R2 Fails to boot

The computer worked fine the last time I used it. Shut it down and put it away for about 40 days and when I went to boot it back up this morning it flashes a blue-screen and then defaults to a "start up repair" or "start windows normally" but when I try to repair it windows doesn't recognize the hard drive. I'm stuck. Tried a clean install, windows didn't see the hard drive........ideas?

 

Dead hard drive. It's like a car that's been sitting for a month. You can't always expect everything to be all hunky-dory when you start it up for the first time in forty days and forty nights.

 

Pulled the HDD and used an external connection to test it with my M17, all files are there, no issues with it at all. classpnp.sys is where it is failing at according to the log. Based on what I've been able to find online it could be any number of things hardware related. What is strange is that it sees both the Hdd and the M-Sata drive in bios and raid config screens but Windows can't seem to find it when I try to do a fresh install.

 

If it was sitting for that long the battery and cmos battery could have died which would have reset the CMOS. Which in turn could have removed the RAID setting?

Might be worth looking into that.

 

Still shows as a raid config and sees both drives. Main battery still had a charge but I suppose the cmos could have gone. Have to figure out where that's at on an M14.

 

You'd just need to pull the battery and hold the power button in for about 20 seconds.

 

That's a good suggestion. Also you can try running a DELL diagnostics.

 

Dell diagnostics says there's nothing wrong with the computer, but it still doesn't boot.......gets to the point where the windows flag starts to come together, flashes a blue screen and goes the the screen mentioned in my first post.

 

I would suggest reinstalling Windows in that case. Here is how.

LINK

 

Try the other boot options which are IDE and AHCI before you reinstall windows. Maybe something tripped the RAID driver.


After that i'd suspect the msata SSD to be the reason for all of this. If it can't contact that SSD it wouldn't boot with the raid drivers.

You could try it in another laptop if you have one around.

 

That could work also. Give it a try before you do the installation to save yourself some time.

 

He could even check to see if the Msata is still identified in the bios :thumbsup:

 

If the main battery still had a charge, then the motherboard would draw power from that for the CMOS in the event the button battery was dead. Plus, the POST screen would have told you if the CMOS battery was dead. If your mSATA used as your cache drive? If so, try removing the mSATA (I know it's crazy, but try it anyway) and set your HDD back to AHCI and see if that does it.

 

Bios still sees the Msata, when I remove the Msata the computer refuses to do anything as it's in a raid config, when I get select the option to remove the raid config it informs me that I'll lose all data on the drive.

I booted from the Windows CD however I can't do a repair or a new install because no hard drives are seen and in the case of a repair, no installed OS is found.

 

If your mSATA was only a cache drive, then you should be able to change your HDD and mSATA down to AHCI without any data loss. Just to be safe, if you have a spare boot drive, you can do it with that and verify the HDD boots when changed to AHCI mode. Then remove the mSATA and try to get the original hard drive to boot solo.

 

I removed the Msata and the raid config and it boots fine off the 7.2k 750gb drive..........apparently the Msata took a dump. Looks like it's time to buy a real SSD and be done with it for the 14 too.

 

Told ya!

(why don't people ever listen to me )

 

Still doesn't "fix" the problem though, now I have a 32gb "SSD" that is good for about nothing and it isn't a cache drive anymore.

 

So use it as a bookmark.

 

Ehhh, sold the computer to one of the guys I work with........it's all good, let him deal with it. Told him what it was doing, got what I paid for it from him, he's happy, I'm happy, we're all happy.

 

Very nice! Now just don't go impulsively buying a new one...