not booting

Ok, so I just turned on my brand new M17x and nothing is happening, all I see is a blinking dash on the upper left corner, what gives?

 

Do you have any peripherals (USB devices, etc.) plugged in? If so, try unplugging them before trying to boot up. Some older USB devices will result in the computer freezing at the screen you are referring to or in some cases, the Alienhead screen.

 

no, nothing plugged in, it freezes right after the alien head

 

Interesting...perhaps try swapping the Hard Drive to the other slot?

 

on the phone with tech

 

If this is a brand new laptop, I would find this completely unacceptable and would demand a brand-new replacement as well as compensation.

 

he just asked me if I have the win7 disc? I think he is just going to have me reinstall everything from scratch.

Bios sees the HDD, but I think it's just blank. Not sure, he is going to call me back shortly, he said he has to change headset, I think that after 45 minutes of troubleshooting he just needs a smoke break

 

I've had both Dell and HP send me computers that were completely void of an OS. They completely forgot to install anything on the drive even though it made it through "testing"

 

If there is no OS installed on his computer, why can it not get past POST? If this was truly the case, shouldn't he have gotten an on-screen message that said something along the lines of, "Your computer has no operating system, please insert a CD, USB Bootable Disk, etc. etc.; Press any key to boot"?

 

I think it depends on the BIOS the computer has. One computer I had with a blank hard drive would flash the cursor for a few seconds, then finally say no operating system installed. The other computer with a blank drive just continuously flashed the cursor and never said a thing.

 

I've been on the phone with tech for the last 5 hours... nothing! We've done all kinds of troubleshooting and nothing. the bios sees the HDD, although is gray out not sure what that means, but when we tried to install windows, windows does not see any drives. They want to send me a new drive but it won't be here until Monday and I'm leaving Sunday on a business trip. So now I have to wait until I come back in 10 days and request a new drive. , gonna keep messing with it. I think I will take the hdd out and plug it in to desktop (sata to USB dock station) and see if it sees it.

ok, so I connected the hdd to my PC via SATA to USB cables and the PC sees the HDD. when I try to open it it asks me if I want to format? Should I format it and then see what happens? it can't hurt at this point, right?

 

Go for it...although if your computer sees the hdd but the laptop doesn't, it would lead me to believe there is something wrong with the mobo.

 

If it's asking you whether or not you want to format the HDD, doesn't that mean that it's not formatted?

 

I guess..... in any event, it didn't work. I tried to install windows but now I get error 0xE0000100 (does not recognize a partition if the last DWORD value of the partition size is 0, gotta love google) but at least it looks like it's seeing the drive. So now I'm in the process of doing a "clean disk" via cmd prompt. then I will allocate a reserve partition and hopefully this will do it. it's going to be a long night..........................

DISKPART> clean all- is running at this time, this will take approx 3-4 hours so I will be going to sleep at this time. I will keep you updated and hopefully I can bring this 2k paper weight back to life.


***UPDATE***

Windows is now installing. The installer now sees the drive and partitions I created. I created a 200MB reserved and a 100GB system partitions. I'm guessing all I need to do is load the Resource Disk afterwards and install all the drivers, right? Do I need to do something or avoid something before hand?

Resource CD seems to be a little outdated which is weird because I just got the laptop yesterday. The disk only shows video card drivers for:
6870M Rev:A00
6970M rev: A00
Intel HD Graphics 3000 Rev: A02

I have a 6990M, at least that's what I ordered.

 

Absolutely unacceptable. Put it back in the box and DEMAND a replacement and compensation. You dont pay well over the odds for a Laptop that does not boot.

Disgusting.

 

I have one device left and I can't figure it out. I've installed all the drivers. I updated with intel website. AMD to 12.1. This is all I got left before I clone the disk. I don't have AR since I had to clear and re-partition the drive. Thinking of using EaseUS Todo Backup unless anyone thinks of a better software or if I can even get AR still.

 

I'd do the same that Joe suggests.

Unacceptable for a brand new computer to be DOA.

 

I also just got a new M17x and feel fortunate now that it is working!! Hope you get satisfactory resolution!

 

I know, but what's done is done at this point (12hours later). I'm leaving on a business trip in a couple of days and I would like to take it with me. If it still gives me trouble while out in my trip, then I'll send it back

I was able to get drivers to ALL devices. Now I'm working on updating Video card to 12.3 from 12.1. While I'm doing this, can any of you guys tell me straight forward if I'm able to get AlienRespawn at this point? If not what other options do I have? I would like to get this last step out of the way before I start installing games. thank you.

Remember this is a complete wiped off drive. I had to clean it all in order to get it to work. I did create a 200MB partition labeled "system reserved", then I created another with 100GB for the Win7. Then I installed it with the provided Dell OS disk.

Dell Tech guy just called me out of nowhere and is helping me with AR. He is currently remote into my laptop and installing it.

Well, all is complete! He resolved the AlienRespawn issue, installed it and left the program with me in the event I loose it again. Laptop working like a champ so far

 

Glad to hear you sorted everything out.

Best of luck!

 

Awesome. Glad it all worked out for you.

 

Glad to see you got you R3 running.

Nice signature btw!