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    Cannot get m7700 d9t to recognize hdds in bios

    Discussion in 'Alienware Area-51/Aurora and Legacy Systems' started by Bi-losing, Aug 1, 2011.

  1. Bi-losing

    Bi-losing Newbie

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    So I have 2 m7700s one has motherboard ver 5.3 one is 6.1. I have tried swapping ide cables to no avail. I then realized the 5.3 mobo is dead. I swapped all the good components to the 6.1 boarded laptop. I also bought a sata to idle converter cable. I have one Sata 80 gb hdd that is known working installed in the bay on bottom slot. I did get the hard drive recognized one time by the fast track controller and was setting it up for a sigle raid array, 1 drive, in that process computer froze on me.

    So I have tried slipstreaming sata drivers onto XP and vista install cds, i have an external usb floppy that I loaded the sata drivers onto and pressed f6 during XP installation and it recognized them. But did not find the hard drive once windows was ready to install.

    I have been successful installing windows XP onto my sata drive when mounted into a USB to sata bay, but on reboot to finish install i get the blue screen of death. I also tried putting the sata drivers onto hard drive in windows XP, system 32 folder, alienware still would not recognize the hard drive after that ( installed into laptop drive bay).

    Have tried just about everything, I am ready to give on up this thing but I've wanted one for ever and got 2 of them for a good deal (150 bucks) both screens work, both power on and can goto bios but rarely will the fastrack come up on the screen even when pressing tab/control + F.

    Any other ideas before I buy a new board for this thing? I also had the fast track controller notice an ide drive one time and never did again. I'm trying every solution before buying a new board for it.

    Thanks in advance. (card reader disabled, ata mode, running 3.8ghz HT 1gig ram currently until I can get it to run, have geforce go 6800 video card)
     
    Bi-losing, Aug 1, 2011
    #1