strange new problem

So i was playing star wars: the old republic last night and when i went to exit the game i got a black screen with a cursor. I was tired so i just held the power button and shut it down that way. When i got up to use it this morning, it posted and everything, but after the windows splash screen i repeatedly got a black screen with my cursor, i tried booting with both intergrated and the discrete card and keep getting the same thing. I have had startup repair running for the last 3 hours but who knows if its actually fixing the problem. if anybody has any ideas on how to get this fixed it would be very helpful.

Edit: Guess ill just make sure i have everything i need backed up and then ill reinstall windows. My hard drive has been filling with junk anyway so i guess its time to clean house

Edit 2: just ran the alienware diagnostics and it said my hard-drive is failing, called dell, got an american dude for once, and they are sending a replacement HD as soon as one because available because they are back-ordered.

 

Very sorry to hear tony. Save what you can.

Two thoughts. Nothing to loose trying to get the drive working again once things are saved.

Is this an opportunity to pop for a 128gb Crucial SSD?

 

might be hehe, but dell has to come out and replaced half the stupid laptop anyway, so I thought I would just let them deal with the damaged hard drive as well. Looks like im back to my core 2 quad desktop for a few days at least

looks like I might be able to snag something for around $200. not sure if I should go with the crucial or something else like this: SAMSUNG 830 Series 128GB

 

Newegg.com - Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

This baby should be arriving thursday along with my M17x R3, but all I see are amazing reviews for this thing. Samsung is also high quality, especially recently.

 

bigtony, tell them you need laptop asap and maybe they will send a HDD with better specifications?

 

Parts should ship on monday according to the guy i was talking to. If they dont ship all my parts or call me im gonna get very mad. Im still waiting on parts for all my other issues and this hard drive failure is just icing on the cake

 

sorry to hear that bro btw did you try 6990m again?

 

Havent got it yet, lol takes stuff a while to get up here in the artic

 

good luck man, we are waiting good news from the frozen north

 

ill let you know as soon as I get the card and install it

just a quick questions on the crucial m4, is this the correct one? Crucial 128 GB m4 it seems like they talk a lot about SATA II and not SATA 3.

 

Excellent choice. This is the drive I am using and it works flawlessly at SATA-III 6.0GB/s. I get higher than advertised read/write speeds. I got lucky at the time and found it on sale at microcenter for $189.00. Be sure to immediately update to the 0009 firmware if it is not already pre-installed on yours. (It should state this on the label. Mine shipped with 0001.)

 

yeah that's sata 3 (6GB/s), I am waiting for intel 520, it is just about to be released apparently

 

I want something thats not gonna fail for sure and i've only heard good things about the crucial drives so I think i'm gonna go that route.

Well just took my windows 8 drive and installed it back into my r3 and it booted right up. it was formated for an entirely different machine and yet it booted up fine anyway. looks like I'll deal with this slow 5400 rpm drive till I either get my HD from dell or the crucial.

 

"Crucial 128 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT128M4SSD2." 6Gb/s equals SATA 3. Nice drive. I have the 256GB version, and it has performed flawlessly. Be sure to update firmware.

 

I'll be sure to do that, thanks

 

looks like I won't be purchasing the drive till I get my machine back from dell... again. turns out they sent me a box and never notified me of what they were doing, so its going in to the dell depot for round 2. lets hope they actually fix all my issues.