Laptop keeps crashing then no OS found - help

over the last few days, my lappy has been crashing daily...i leave it and come back to it sitting at the alienware head with f2/f12 options....it wont do a thing....unresposive.

I have to hard shut it down and then i get blank screen with "no OS found"

It has also decided to run chkdsk to analyze my HDD's.....

Spoke to an AW guy who disabled it from booting from the network in bios....he said that it would cure it as the system was trying to boot from a network, hence no operating system.

Obviosuly hasnt cured it and its crashing left right and centre and always displays that no OS found.....

Anyone have any ideas/advice?

 

I am going through this right now, did you update to the new A07 BIOs?

The second I did that, I started getting missing operating system errors. Then I started getting BSOD saying THERE WAS AN UNCORRECTABLE HARDWARE ERROR

I call Alienware, after 2 hours on the phone they say its a mobo problem. So 2 days later I get dispatched a dell dude to fix it. He replaces it, and we had to set up a new RAID array and all that jazz and right after I select which partition I want to install my W7 Home Premium OS on it gives me that same BSOD.

The rep calls Alienware, so they end up saying they're gonna send out new HDDs and mobo again and the next day (today) they replaced both and still the same error.

Now, I have a box coming to my door on Monday to depot back to Dell which'll take 7-10 days for me to get it back

EDIT: as it stands I have a 13 pound brick that looks like an Alienware in my kitchen just sitting there at the table the two different dell Techs have toyed around with it and I'm just waiting for my box. I could turn it on right now, but within 5-10 seconds of turning it on I get the missing operating system error. Actually, I believe with this new mobo installed the tech said it was DOA, so literally nothing was showing up. Yeah, that's right. I remember turning it on after he installed it and literally nothing was showing up on my LED.

 

Well this could be a few different problems

1. does the raid array report any errors ?

you may have to enter the raid utility during the boot up process to see the status.

If the raid array comes back OK, then double check the BIOS settings for the raid config, including the Boot prioroty.

Last back up your files, and try reformatting and re-installing your OS.

Also you can also try downloading a drive fitness test from the manufacters web site and test the hard drives.

Have you run Dells Diagnostics ?

 

IDK if you're talking to me but I passed hardware diagnostics with flying colors even though I apparently have an uncorrectable hardware error.

 

Regarding bios, im running a06 on this system......along with these messages about no OS system, i have also hade the following messages:

PXE-E61: MEDIA TEST FAILURE, CHECK CABLE
PXE-M0F: EXITING INTEL BOOT AGENT
OPERATING SYSTEM NOT FOUND

Dont know what the heck is going on with it but like i said, i can leave it and it seems perfectly fine, then i come back half an hour later to the fact it has crashed and tried to reboot i think and is stuck at the large alienhead with f2/f12 options which wont even work!

I have to perform a hard shutdown and even then, when i try to boot it back up, its not 100% certain it will boot to the desktop at all....sometimes it just has a black screen with "no operating system found" on it.....

(i should state at this point that this system is going o be returned and i already have its replacement here so from my point of view, its more annoying than anything else...when i want to use it, it simply is not reliable)

I would like to diagnose what is wrong with it for my own sanity, being a noob, i dont really know how to check the raid array or other afore mentioned things so if someone could let me know how to that would be great.

 

Raid is more of a headache than it's worth. You guys are better off getting a small SSD for the primary OS and regular hdd for the secondary.

 

Not if you need the extra HDD space two large HDDs can provide.

Personally, I've never had any problems with RAID on my M17x-R1 or R2 respectively. Has always worked like a charm. Then again, I haven't tried BIOS A07 for the M17x-R2 which some are reporting problems with.

 

I had similar problems on my other notebook a while back and it was the HDD. Somehow the harddrive was not being detected properly therefore the next booting option that was set in the BIOS or something was trying to be initiated instead. All that PXE stuff is normally trying to boot from a network source or something.
So for me it was the hdd. Cheers.

 

Could always go with a 160GB intel SSD or 256 Samsung SSD plus a 750GB HDD in the secondary slot. Unless you need more than that, then thats just plain craziness

 

So witch ssd should you go for? I was thinking of a 128gb but then you have read/type speed that is a quite huge selection. You can buy one in a store but aint it one more thing you need to put on the ssd, so it fit in the slot in the computor??

 

Ok, SSD suggestions taken on board but that doesnt help me with this particular problem!

What would cause it to crash in the first place? how do i check the raid array? - i have run hardware diagnostics and comes back with no HDD errors....but yet still get this "no operating sytstem found" message....

Spoke to AW tech this morning, he left me running the diagnostics and said would phone back later ....still waiting like 5 hours....

(it doesnt really matter - this pile of junk is going back anyhow as i have my replacement system here, i just wanna know what the heck is wrog with this one!)

 

Sounds like a good plan, wish I knew this back in February

 

You push Ctrl+I when you are booting up. That is where you can create or delete a RAID volume

 

Sounds to me like a software conflict, Maybe a virus.

 

if hes running 2 500gb in raid 0 then its only 500gb storage anyway. one ssd & one storage is much safer than any raid config. the only raid worth using is the mirrored setup, any other raid config is much more headache than its worth. from the info provided your having Hdd controller errors or one of the Hdds is done. do a re-install of windows and see if it continues to have issues. if yes then try using only one hdd at a time doing windows installs and observe them. if one of them fails then you know what the prob is, if they both have issues then send it back to dell.

 

Its going back anyhow LOL, its my original system which has already been replaced, just waiting for Dell to pick it up....its just doin my head in because i wasnt expecting so may problems.....

At least it IS going back....im just hoping my new system (same HDD config) doesnt suffer the same ill fate.....

 

please take it out of the raid configuration. its really not worth the troubles.

 

Nah...you arent understanding me LOL...its already going back cos of other stuff....i have the replacement here with me now for it so im just waiting on Dell to collect it....its a done deal. The new system is a brand new system with some "perks" added....

Like i say, its just annoying and i would like to know why its happening, thats all for my own satisfaction!

 

I'd have thought it sounds like a hard drive or a motherboard issue...it doesn't make sense to me that it could be a problem with any other component particularly if hardware tests come out perfectly. Very very strange. I'd try it without a RAID configuration and see if it makes any difference at all.

The very fastest SSDs out there are the high end ones made by Intel and OCZ (the Intel X25-M and the OCZ Vertex 2). I'm not sure what other very high performance SSDs are out there, but you simply have to search for SSD benchmarks on Google and you'll find a lot of information that should help you.

Erm...what?!?

In striped RAID (RAID 0) the two hard drives are combined with data split across them, appearing as one hard drive to the OS. It combines the storage space of both hard drives...if he's running 2 500GB hard drives in RAID 0 then he's got 1TB of hard drive space. I should know, I'm running two 250GB hard drives in RAID 0 on a desktop and it comes out as a single 500GB drive.

RAID 0 isn't generally worth it, the performance boost with modern, fast hard drives is relatively minor (unless it's actual hardware-based RAID with a RAID controller-not a case on a laptop). I agree that the best solution is a fast SSD primary with a fairly large secondary hard drive.

If you need the best of both (high performance with high capacity) then I'd recommend looking at the Seagate Momentus XT hybrid hard drive. They come in models up to 500GB and combine a standard 7200RPM hard drive with a 4GB SLC SSD buffer, which can speed up the read times to near that of an SSD (once the drive has 'learned' the file associations with its algorithms).

 

Stevie,


I think your boot manager is missing, or corrupted.

 

Well that might explain the fact that one of the messages i have had on this system since having the problem is PXE-M0F: EXITING INTEL BOOT AGENT

Any advice to identify/rectify?

 

Here is a link from Microsoft

How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows

Do you rememeber what you were doing that may have caused this like installing or uninstalling any software or any updates? Not that it matters but just want to avoid this problem. Lucky you on the new upgraded computer they are swapping you

 

Falcon,

The only stuff that i have done of any note was to dowload cpuz/gpuz/fraps and various windows updates...bit of web browsing too but nothing major.
Been trying to think what i may have done to cause it but cant think of anything at all....

Thanks re: the new system.....havent done much with it yet but heres hoping it wont have any issues like this one!

 

no i understand you just fine, but you're not getting the point here. raid in any config is problem waiting to happen. even on your replacement. if i got a new computer from the factory with raid on it, it which would be a mistake cause i would never order raid to begin with, first thing i would do is wipe both hard drives with the dot method and start from scratch, one being a the OS drive & the other being the storage drive. so when i say please eliminate the raid config, i mean in your brand new machine. get rid of the raid array. ASAP.

 

had my raid array nonsense mixed up. thanks for clarifying it.

 

Ahhh - gotcha....

Well the only reason for the HDD config was because the online offer was for that particular setup. It was either x2 500gb in raid 0 or a single 160gb HDD.....seemed foolish NOT to take the offer/deal....

 

the deal is no Brainer, but when you get it just take it out of RAID. its fairly simple and will cause you less headaches down the road.

 

Ok this just happened to me when updating the BIOS from A04 to A07 I got the Operating System not found (I am using RAID 0 BTW), went into BIOS, Advanced Went down to Sata Operation set it to "RAID", Might have went to RAID OPROM UI "Enabled" (just make sure its Enabled I guess or atleast mine is) then went to RAID Mode Selection and selected the Raid I had set up RAID 0 "Enabled' make sure these 3 things are set above and you should start back up fine. Was fearful I would have to re-format windows and lose all my 720 movies I did not backup lol

Hope this helps the people who flash the BIOS and are using RAID.

~lordskorrkeeper

 

That is common issue when updating the BIOS and having re-config the settings in the BIOS after flashing.

 

Thats just the info i needed - actually, the AW tech i spoke to said exact same thing....after flashing my bios from 05 to 06, i had to go back into bios and change the raid settings back to raid "whatever".

Did that and not had any conflicting messages again!

Also, lets say if i wanted to mirror my HDD's...can i just go into bios and set to raid 1 and then thats it...all done? (apart from having to reinstall my OS on whichhever HDD i want to?)

 

you set raid in the BIOS, then when you boot up, you go into the raid config and select the options (raid 0 or 1) and the drives

 

This is how you get the drives into a mirrored config. However, you will then lose any data that's on the secondary drive (and possibly the first, unsure about this).

You certainly can't just swap from RAID-0 to RAID-1 and not lose any data, because around half of the data is stored on each drive. As you will guaranteed lose the data that's on the secondary drive, this means that half of your file system will disappear. This will render it unreadable, and therefore you'll lose everything.

However, I'm guessing that you probably guessed this already, and will do a backup/restore or start clean when going to RAID-1.

 

Ahuhs you can set RAID 0 or 1 from the RAID config setup. I think it was F10 from memory to bring it up.

RAID 0 for performance mode and RAID 1 for mirroring.
Each time you want to change RAID formats you will lose everything. The RAID array will have to be changed from RAID 0 to 1. Then you will be able to format and install the OS again.

Unfortunately you can't just select an option to switch from RAID 0 to RAID 1 or vice versa when ever you feel like it. That would be great but yeh you can't.

So yeh definitely backup everything first before you start playing or switching RAID setups. Cheers.

 

Thanks everyone - been very informative replies to my post. At some point in time i will indeed swap the primary out for a smaller HDD and run them without any raid config with the OS being on the SSD for speed.
Seems like this is a common conmfiguration but I will look into that more after saving up some dosh for the SSD!!

 

After doing a complete re-install of windows 7 and all the relevant drivers (including changing raid settings in bios after flash to a07) i have had another "crash" - came back into the room after leaving everything working ok to find a black screen with "no operating system found" in white at the top.....just one line sying that....

What the heck is wrong with this thing?

 

Just checking, did you 1st install windows then flash the bios? You might want to just double-check your settings in BIOS. Maybe even load defaults and re-do them. I also wonder if maybe your battery might be dying?

 

Firstly, reinstalled windows and THEN flashed bios......then went back into bios to ensure correct raid settings......

Laptop running on a/c when it apparently crashed and reverted to the black screen "no os found"

 

Ah sorry I didn't specify, but I meant your BIOS battery. But I highly doubt it since they usually take a few years to die.

Did you try restoring defaults and re-setting up the RAID?

 

Yeah...AW tech guided me thru resetting raid after windows reinstall. He checked all drivers etc via remote and flashed bios to a07 then configured raid0 via bios.

 

Just making sure I understand correctly. He checked all drivers etc via remote and flashed bios (makes sense), the part that doesn't make sense is, did he configure the raid0 via bios while remote connected? because that wouldn't be possible.

Sorry, I'm not trying to be mean or make you sound dumb. The steps just need to be a little clearer.

Could you tell me exactly what it says on the 1st page in BIOS? mainly if it sees 2 hard drives, and what it says under the boot option for the hard drive?

Sorry I don't have the M17xR2 anymore to know exactly what they say.

 

Sorry, maybe im not being clear....i remember him saying "oh, have you done the ao7 bios?" and i said no, not yet.....he said "may as well do it now huh?" so i said yes....and he remotely went to the dell support site, downloaded and then ran the .exe file.

I had done this previously myself from 05 to 06 and everything he did seemed to follow procedure...got the same messages come up...do not power off...do not unplug etc and the progress looked the same as when i did it.

I will have to look at the bios and get back to you on that one....mind you, it doesnt make a great deal of difference to me as this system is getting returned in a week as i already have my replacemment system here.....its just annoying as to why this one keeps having the same problem after everything ive done.

Go figure? LOL

 

What bios version is on the new machine?

 

its now a07....initially was a05 which i changed to a06....did windows reinstall...installed drivers and then was changed to a07.

 

Have you had a chance to look at the BIOS screen yet? I just want to double-check your settings.

 

I'm not sure this is a RAID issue. I've had this happen twice and I'm only running a single 500GB HD. The first time required a complete reformat but the other day, I had the computer on as I was doing some things around the house, and when I came back to it, I had the black screen withe the "No OS found" message. A restart fixed the issue but now it's got me waiting for the hard crash, followed by reformat, reload all the updated drivers, and days of troubleshooting to get the system back to where it is now. Everytime I think this computer is almost performing as advertised, something else pops up.

 

I have reinstalled the OS and drivers and i havent had it again YET.....but it was very annoying....kept leaving the computer in a normal state, returning to the black screen/no OS message.

I will have this system maybe for another few weeks before its due to get shipped back in lieu of my intended replacement - i will see how she performs with a fresh install and post back with any news.

 

Finally getting my M17X back tomorrow from Dell, ugh, what a long wait.