Recover Sata Drivers?

Hi,

I was very happy with my M14x, i7 and a fast hard drive in a smallish laptop was perfect for my job as a hardware developer !

Then it died yesterday morning (or more precisely windows did after 4 months of use...). It now BSOD's on boot (just at the point where the logon screen would appear and then it resets). Safe mode also BSOD's.

I have run Ubuntu Live on a CD and backed up all my work (so I believe there is no hardware faults).

So i tried to use the system recovery/alienrespawn but the recovery tools can not seem to see the OS paritition, supposedly it requires drivers and presents the windows like these ( SATA Drivers - Load in Windows Recovery Options - Windows 7 Forums )

Anyone know where I can get the actual sata controller drivers for the M14x before I give up and call Alienware in?

I am hoping alienware have put them on the recovery partition somewhere. If not, it seems rather pointless having the recovery partition!

Any help appreciated! Cheers

 

You should be able to download all the drivers you need from Dell's support website.

 

Thanks for the reply , I have tried the cougar sata drivers (for the m14x) from the Dell website to no avail.

Also rang up Dell, and they suggested I re-install windows from the discs that came with the machine. Same problem! The windows installer can not see the OS partition even with the correct drivers, which I find bizarre as Ubuntu live runs fine.

Also sometimes when booting into windows install it may or may not see USB drives - again something Ubuntu has no problems with. I have no idea why it needs drivers to see the OS partition, considering the recovery parition is on the SAME hard drive - at a hardware level it is obviously working. I have built myself a fair few desktops over the years, and I have never had this much hassle .

I am really starting to regret buying the M14X, this downtime is costing me a lot of time, hassle and money.

 

Here are the F6 drivers, but I don't know why you would need them.

Windows will not be able to see usb drives plugged into the usb 3.0 ports, so ensure you are using standard ports.

What hard drive are you using? I've seen some SSDs cause similar problems where windows couldn't detect the drive.

 

Hi Custom90gt thanks for the advice on the USB ports! trying the f6 "diskette" now... cheers!

I have the standard 500 GB hdd - the SSD was out of my price range

 

Cheers custom90gt!!!!!

Your driver was spot on! Have no idea why I needed it, all the desktops I have built (with Sata) have never needed this!

Nice one dude

 

good to hear, hopefully you get your stuff up and running...

 

Another problem - now i have three partitions listed I can not install to the third one (OS).

"Windows is unable to install to the selected location. Error: 0x80300001”.

Really getting annoyed at the m14x now, the re-installation process is turning into a calamity.

 

Hummmmm, that doesn't sound good.

Did you burn the drivers to a cd and then leave the cd in the drive instead of the windows install disk when you click next?

I've seen it where people leave the driver cd in the drive, it can be removed after loading the sata driver.

 

I used a USB pen/thumb drive. The Fn + F6 eject fails to work during windows setup so CD's was a no go to start with

I still can not see why I am having problems - Ubuntu live worked fine. Has anyone else had such problems?

I hope alienware honour the 1 year NRB gaurantee - all the years I have built myself desktops I have never had this type of hassle. Really regretting buying a laptop this time around.

 

Small update, I almost gave up and called Alienware/Dell in, but before I did I decided to run ubuntu again.

By using gparted I found the HDD was partitioned such that the recovery partition was labelled as "boot". So i decided to delete the OS and recovery partition leaving only the ~40 MB system diagnostic partition. Rebooted and the windows 7 disc instantly recognised the hard drive - and it is installing now.

So far so good (85% expanding windows files). I have also left a 80 GB partition to put Ubuntu on afterwards.

I find it really appalling that the recovery partition and the windows disk included with the machine was not capable of re-installing windows over a broken windows installation.

Really bad product flaw in my opinion - really bad software design, wasted two days figuring this problem out by myself and with the help of this forum. Dell have been useless

 

Well I'm glad you figured out that one as well. That was going to be my next suggestion, but I didn't know how attached you were to the recovery partition.
Hopefully all goes well now...

 

Thanks for that link!

 

It's all running fine now (7 and Ubuntu) but what a nightmare it has been!

Not at all impressed with Dell's "experts". I will not be buying another Dell product put it that it way, which is a shame as I quite like the machine.

Cheers Custom90gt!

 

Anybody has an updated link for this driver? I have the exact same problem whenever I try to clean install W7 or W8! I'm clueless, because whenever I use the recovery image from Dell, it reinstalls Windows 7, but not like "clean" ... I want to do a fresh/clean install, but for some reason Windows 7 or Windows 8 setup can't find my hard drives. Does anybody know why?