Clean windows install issue.

I just did a clean windows install on my m17x R3 and I am having a strange issue...I'll start with some background info. When I first got the computer it just had a 300 GB HDD. I bought an Intel 510 SSD and installed it in Bay 1 as per recommendations from this site. I did a clean windows install to the SSD. Everything was fine, except if I tried to boot up while a disk was in the disk drive. My computer would treat any disk, be it a movie, game, anything, as if it were an OS disk. It would always try to boot from it. Then it would fail, I would have to eject the disk, and then restart. From there, the computer would boot perfectly fine. Today I decided to do a clean windows install to see if it would fix the problem. Well...now the problem is different, but similar.

Any time I boot up with a disk in the drive, my secondary hard drive (D) becomes invisible to the system. The computer boots, and when I go to My Computer, the only drive that shows up is my C drive. If I go to disk management, D doesn't show up in the list. Also, since my pagefile is on my D drive, when this happens I get a notification saying my pagefile has been temporarily moved. If I eject the disk and reboot, everything starts normally. So now windows is booting if there is a disk in the drive...but the end result is the same. If I want to boot without issue, I can't have any disk whatsoever in my drive.

Right off the bat, I will answer the first question that is going to be asked. Yes, I am sure that my boot order in BIOS does not have CD/DVD ahead of hard drives.

The easy work around is to just never boot with a disk in. However, it is frustrating that I should need a workaround at all. What could the problem be? I felt like doing a clean install would be a helpful process of elimination. But with this new issue, I am beyond stumped. Is it an issue with my HDD? With my dual hard drive configuration? Please help!


Edit: Correction in regards to D not showing up in the list: Currently, my SSD is my C drive, secondary is D, and my CD drive is E. When I boot with a disk in, my secondary drive disappears, and my CD drive gets relabeled as D until I reboot.

 

Strange!... All right so your SSD is in the slot 1... the HDD in slot 0 would not happen to be the original C drive which came with the laptop?
In the boot option I'm gonna say it for the sake of saying it though it seems you got it xD : Secondary drive on top, primary behind, dvd etc...
To my defence when you call your D drive secondary, though it really is, your computer still sees it as primary. (since you got it in slot 0)
Also, another "obvious" you did that clean install changing the BIOS setting from RAID to AHCI?
That's all I got unfortunately... but I m sure others will further help you if that doesn't help best of luck to you.

 

My BIOS setting is currently set to RAID. On one of the clean install guides that was recommended. Should I change it? What is the difference?

 

that isn't your problem. Mine is in Raid too, and i just tried booting up with a DVD in the drive and it worked fine

and you've double checked and triple checked that your boot order is correct in the bios?

Have you done a power drain?...take the laptop battery out, and mobo battery out?

 

I have quintuple checked my BIOS boot order. I have not done a power drain, I will look into that. I just checked my device manager and I have an unknown device being picked up...

The location is listed as "on Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System", with the following hardware IDs:

ACPI\CPL0002
*CPL0002

Is this totally unrelated? It was not listed as unknown before my clean install.

 

you need to install the OSD (On Screen Display) from the driver cd that came with your laptop

but i think its unrelated

 

Okay cool. Installed that driver. Fixes that problem I suppose. I'm considering taking it to a local computer shop maybe? I don't think dell will be any help, even though I paid out the for a warranty.

 

It sounds like it's booting from your old 320GB drive. For the moment, it doesn't really matter whether you used RAID or AHCI for the SATA protocol. You may be dealing with a semantics problem. The SSD, when located in Slot/Port 1, as it should be, is still the "Second Disk Drive" for BIOS boot order purposes, even though it will become the c: drive after boot, and must be set as first in the boot order. If Hard disk is first in boot order, then it will boot from the old 320GB disk, which is still bootable absent reformatting, which you do not mention. So you would be actually running Windows as it existed before installation of the SSD and has no knowledge of it. However, the SSD should show up in Disk Management as an unassigned drive, which would be invisible to Windows in its current configuration. Don't assign it from the old installation; the results could be unpredictable. I do not understand the interplay of the CD/DVD drive. Just be sure that Second Disk Drive is first in the boot order.

 

if you're under warranty, i'd definitely call dell support because it free...and schedule a tech to come over and fix it for you!

 

Prior to the clean install I formatted both drives. I deleted all partitions on the 300 gig drive. Installed windows on the SSD. On first boot I created a storage partition on the HDD. So windows is not on it. In BIOS the Secondary drive is first in my boot list. So windows is definitely booting from my SSD. Sorry I didn't make that clear.

 

Sorry. That's what you said; I just thought you must be confused about the terminology given the sequence of events. Clearly not. Then what you're experiencing makes no sense at all to me. I will await with interest the final resolution.

 

Yeah it doesn't make any sense to me either. Lol. I haven't seen this problem anywhere ever before. My searches yield nothing. Clean install ruled a lot of things out. My only thoughts at this point are... Bad HDD, maybe bad BIOS? I haven't done anything to my BIOS so I can't imagine that is it. There is just nothing that makes sense about having a disk in causing such weird problems. Rawr.

 

Yeah, especially when you consider the fact that turning my computer on with the windows DVD inside will result in a normal start up xD (I HAVE to press F12 to boot from the DVD, and same thing for my old Toshiba)

 

As an exciting addition to this bizarre issue, I have just discovered that if my printer is plugged in via USB, and is powered on when I power my computer on, it causes this same issue.

 

Just out of curiosity can you disable boot on usb and optical drive and see what happens. Does it boot up properly?

Windows 7 can be a little crazy. I normally recommend installing windows 7 with 1HD and nothing else.

To that point did you have the second HD and printer plugged in when you installed the OS?

 

I did have the second HD installed when I installed Windows, but it is internal and was formatted with all partitions deleted prior to installation. The printer was not plugged in. I will try disabling usb and optical drive boot, will report back.

 

Okay so I don't know how to disable boot items. Only how to change the boot order. But the strange thing is, I have an external hard drive plugged in via USB to my computer at all times, and it doesn't interfere with booting. But my printer does...? Ugh. Idk what to do. This is a mess.

 

I checked, there is no way to disable the boot devices on the alienware.

So let's just assume for right now that this might be a Windows MBR problem.

You can start by setting your optical drive as first boot device, removing all other devices from your system and try to do a repair from the OS disk.

That may not always work, but it often does.

If it doesn't you're into the bootrec commands which there a tons of tutorials for but here's one of them.

How to (Really) fix Windows 7 boot problems

Again this is done from the OS disk, just follow the tutorial but ONLY after you tried system repair and verified that it did not work.

This issue gets muddled because you've done things to optimize the SSD (pagefile) and aren't booting from the 0 disk like the manufacturer expects. These can lead to issues but just be patient.

 

Thanks for the tip, I will try both. Before I do the second one, what exactly does it do?

 

So I ran startup repair and bootrec, both to no effect. I am in the process of uploading some videos that more clearly demonstrate what is going on.

 

So here is the first video, of what a regular boot looks like with no disk in the drive.

m17x Regular Boot - YouTube

It is fast and flawless, with the whole process taking less than 40 seconds.

Now here is a video of what happens when there is a disk in the drive. Read the description to get a little more detail as to what is happening. Sorry the video is long; I recorded the WHOLE boot process, starting with putting a disk in, shutting down, and powering up. At one minute into the video it gets to the Starting Windows screen (already should have been booted into windows). It isn't until about 3:50 that I get past the Starting Windows screen. From there the video shows that the storage drive (previously D) cannot be found. I open Computer to show that only the C drive and the now D labeled CD drive are present.

In computer management I show that the storage drive is not detected until a rescan of the disks. At which point it appears and is relabeled as E.

m17x Wonky Boot - YouTube

So. There you have it.

 

Another step just out of curiosity, try booting with just 1 HD your OS drive in the 0 bay. Once that works try it with the optical drive disk inserted.

It may take a complete reinstall to fix this but let's just see if we can isolate what the problem is.

 

Next time you want to kill a spider try a hammer instead of a sword frodo from the shire. Mallets work wonders and it won't cause collateral damage.

Great Youtube video lol.

 

If your external hard drive is connected via USB 3.0 it won't boot from there I believe.

I can see that you are STILL in RAID mode, consider trying to reinstall windows in AHCI (Modify from BIOS, then exit and save). Okay some people have it working that way. Other's don't. and no.... 40sec is EXTREMLY SLOW for a SSD. My SSD is slow and old, yet I manage a 20sec startup on my machine. My original DELL HDD 7200RPM was faster than that :S

 

a) Have you moved the Page File back to the c: drive/boot SSD?

b) What does the Raid splash screen say during the POST process shown on the second video?

Sorry for your continuing problems.

 

Okay. Just woke up and I have class in an hour, but when I get home I will try this out first.

Well the actual boot time is in the 30 second range, I just said "less than forty seconds" because the whole video was about 40 seconds". But from what you are saying, it sounds like it is still slower than normal...?As far as AHCI is concerned, somebody mentioned that it likely wasn't my issue. But when I start doing some test reinstalls, I will definitely try using AHCI instead.

After the failure to recognize my drive, the page file moves itself back to C:. I didn't realize this the first time it happened so I was booting for a few days with the page file on C: and still encountered the issue.

The RAID screen says
"Intel Rapid Storage Technology Option ROM- 10.0.0.something
Copyright Intel Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
RAID Volumes:
None defined.

Physical devices:
Port Device Model/Serial #/Size

(Lists my two hard drives)

Press CTRL-I to enter Configuration Utility..."

I have always assumed this is normal with Intel SSD's?

 

I felt as though the sword was really my best choice.

God, that video makes me look like a nerd. *looks around* Okay okay. I admit it. I am a nerd.

 

Put the Pagefile on your c: drive until this is resolved. That is probably contributing to the painfully slow startup time.

The Raid configuration splash screen is normal where SATA mode is set to Raid, but doesn't contain any data that would explain your issue. The fact that it does not initially recognize the second HDD as d: drive suggests it may be treating the SSD and the HDD as if they are in a Raid array, but then finally works out that they are not.

If I were you, I would reinstall Win 7 on the SSD yet again after switching to AHCI in the BIOS. Then after installation is complete, reformat the original HDD. When you reinstall Win7, be sure to leave the installation disk in the CD/DVD drive through the reboots until it returns to the beginning of the installation proceeding. It is easy to remove the disk prematurely, leaving Win 7 incompletely installed or configured. The fact that your computer keeps returning to the optical drive when a disk is present suggests that it may be trying to complete the install process. Nothing else makes any sense to me.

 

I haven't read through all this thread (it's long), but it sounds like it's a boot manager -up.

You'll need to reinstall, but this time physically pull whatever drives aren't your OS drive from your machine, then install. What I think has happened is that Windows has dumped some boot information on one of your other drives. This would make sense, as it would render the drive invisible to Windows, as is what happens if you dual boot systems.

 

Okay. So I am out of class and plan to devote the afternoon to hammering this out. I think my first step is going to be a clean windows install. First I plan to switch to AHCI, format my storage drive, remove it, and do a clean windows install with only my SSD installed. Should I move my SSD to bay 0? I have read that there are problems with the SSD getting dropped to 3GB/s being in bay 0. Will this not be an issue since I am switching to AHCI? Just wondering how I can do the best possible clean install eliminating as many variables as possible.

 

A clean install should fix all the problems. I too have read that there's issues with the speeds in 0 but only after I had installed the OS on my SSD on 0. I get fairly good speeds for my patriot torqx but it's several years old and I don't have to worry about the sata ceiling.

I think I may have also read that one of the bios updates may have fixed that issue.

I'd just remove all other devices no matter what you do. Let the OS fully update before you add anything else.

I agree with Relevator go with AHCI.

 

As long as you only have one drive in, so that Windows has to put everything on that one drive during install, then you'll be fine.

 

You won't be able to boot to the SSD (to format the storage drive) if you switch to AHCI now. Switch to AHCI immediately prior to the clean Windows installation on the SSD. Don't worry about the storage drive; you can format that after the SSD is straightened away. Leave the SSD in Port 1 (the middle slot) to assure full SATA 3 transfer speeds.

 

Okay. So I am dropping an in progress update. I formatted my storage drive, switched to AHCI in BIOS. I powered down my computer, removed the storage drive and left the SSD in bay 1. I booted with my Windows disk and formatted my SSD. Installed Windows, and have installed all of my drivers and Windows Updates. I just did a test and booted with Transformers in the drive. It booted fine. However; after the Alien head screen it hung for a few seconds, noticeably longer than without the disk in the drive. Once windows booted, everything was fine. But I have to note that I have not installed my storage drive, so there is a chance that the problem is persisting but does not manifest yet as there is no drive for it to not recognize. I am now going to boot into BIOS and double check my boot options and whatnot, then shut down and install my storage drive. Wish me luck.

 

Good luck. Check for firmware update's for that SSD. Are you on the latest BIOS? Do you have the latest drivers from the support site. A couple on the resource disk are outdated.

 

I am not on the latest BIOS and I have not checked for an SSD firmware update. I know the drivers on the resource disk are outdated, but the previous clean install I did was all from drivers downloaded from the website. I just installed my storage drive and created a partition for it, so now I am going to pop a disk in and see what happens. After that I will check on the firmware update. Never done a BIOS update/don't know how, but it is something I will look into.

 

Check your SSD firmware first.

 

Checked for firmware updates, none found. So I popped the disk in and restarted. The boot definitely hung a couple of seconds after the Alien head logo, and the disk drive made noise, but Windows booted fine after that--nowhere near the four minutes it was taking before. I checked computer management to see if the drive was still recognized, and it was. I will now try relabeling my drives (CD drive as E, storage as D). Then I will do a reboot without and with a disk present.

 

Also want to note that my boot time is down to 10 seconds or less. Likely due in part to switching to AHCI and not having the RAID splash screen appear on boot.

 

Congratulations. It has to feel great after all the struggles. Which SSD do you have?

 

Awesome =)

Now with all the extra time due to your fast boot up you can slay more spiders!

 

Maybe the BIOS update fixes the short "hang". Not sure what you are on now but the latest one can be found on Dells support site. Download and open simple as that.

Run boottimer or bootracer for boot time's.

 

Relettered my drives and did a reboot with a disk in, still slight hang, but no drive relettering or disappearing. However, before we pop out the bubbly I am going to move my page file over to my storage drive and reboot. Then put a disk in and reboot again, see if the sky falls.

 

Oh, and to answer the question, I have a 120 GB Intel 510 SSD.

 

Can you make a video of the boot and where it hangs.

 

I can, but it isn't especially significant. When it boots, the Alien head logo appears and the red loading bar fills. When there is no disk in, the bar fills and then the Starting Windows screen appears. With a disk in, the bar fills and sits there for three or four seconds, then goes to the Starting Windows screen. A difference of about five seconds in boot time. Once I finish my page file test I will make a video.

 

I see what you mean. If you reboot with the windows 7 disk in what does it do?

 

Scratch that, it is more than five seconds. But it still boots fine, just a tad slower. So, good news. Moved the page file and inserted a disk. Did a reboot, everything booted smoothly. I don't want to jynx it...but it looks as though my woes may have come to an end! I can't express how thankful I am for all of you helping me through this. Though it was painful, and I definitely can't say for sure what exactly fixed it, I know that you were all genuinely interested and helpful, and I appreciate that! I'll definitely keep everyone posted as to how it runs from here. I will continue to get it back to its "optimal" settings and install all my programs, see if anything causes the problem to rear its head. But at least if that happens I will know what it was. Thanks again to everyone who chimed in!

 

Check you BIOS version and update if there is a newer one.

 

Threw my Windows disk in and did a reboot just for kicks. Just like any other disk, has a brief hang but boots just fine! Such a huge relief to have this issue behind me...I had been feeling so down about it. Even though it seemed minor, I dumped 3k on this thing. Knowing that there was something I couldn't fix was getting under my skin.