Screwed up my Alienware m11x. D:

Erm... I kinda screwed up my Alienware trying to fix it.

There were problems with my computer hanging randomly so I called in a Dell technician to help fix it and he replaced the entire motherboard for me. But them he said I needed to update the drivers e.g. The nvidia drivers and flash the BIOS. I couldn't because the settings are the same. So I decided to restore to factory settings.

But then when I tried to restore using the USB key I made using the DELLSAFE local back up thing they said that my winload.exe is either missing or corrupted. I tried using F8 at BIOS but nothing showed up.

Figuring it's something with the partitioning, silly old me decided to make th drives active using disk management. Bad move. The drives apparently shouldn't be touched because now when I boot up and run past BIOS, a message saying that BOOTMGR is missing, ctrl+alt+del to restart.

Any help please?

By the way, yes, I have no optical drives. =\

 

Ah your issue is either fairly simple, or extraordinarily complicated, especially TSing over a forum.

On the simple side of things, open up your BIOS, go to the Advanced menu, make sure SATA Operation is set to ACHI. Then go to Boot and make sure Hard Drive is at the top of the boot device priority list.

If that doesn't work, your bootloader is corrupt and may be repairable using the Windows 7 disk/USB. Or we'll have to do a low level format of the HDD to wipe the existing bootloader and try from scratch. Can get pretty complicated in this area.

 

providing the bootloader or bootrec is corrupted, how about trying to repair them via command prompt prior to resorting to low level format?

 

That usually can be fixed simply by making sure that the ACHI option is set. However if something happened to the master boot record while working with different partitions or during your restore then the BOOTMGR problem becomes more complicated as previously stated.

The easiest way to fix it would be to do as Dredd said and try to use Command Prompt and repair with the command "bootrec /fixboot" without the quotations around it.

However the best way to fix it involves the windows 7 disc that came with the laptop, which you cannot use without an optical drive of course lol. Since you are stuck at the screen asking you to reboot before you ever get into Windows try making sure that ACHI is set in the Bios first.

 

Oh, ACHI is set already

Thanks guys for the quick response, I'm really grateful >.<

However, how DO you go to command prompt from bios? All that I see online is people telling each other not to go into command prompt =/

 

You can install a Win7 DVD to a 4GB+ USB drive. You'll need another computer to do this.

Do the following:
Obtain an ISO of a Win7 DVD. Many websites have them.
Mount the ISO using PowerISO or similar application.

Open 'cmd.exe' and type 'diskpart'
Perform the following

Code:

list disk
## Find what disk number your USB drive is.
select disk (x) [ where (x) is your disk number]
clean
create partition primary
active
format fs=fat32 quick
assign
exit

In the open command prompt window, type the following:

Code:

xcopy (ISO or DVD Drive):\*.* (USB Drive):\ /s

(i.e. xcopy e:\*.* f:\ /s)
This will copy everything form the DVD or ISO to your USB drive. If you can't get it to work this way, just use explorer to drag and drop.

Once you have all the files on the usb drive, perform the following:
Open an elevated command window if not already open.
Change drives to your usb drive
Browse the boot folder on the usb drive
Type the following:

Code:

bootsect.exe /nt60 (USB Drive):

i.e. bootsect.exe /nt60 h:
you should get a message saying the bootcode was updated.

Then place the USB drive in your laptop and boot to it. You may need to pull up the boot menu or modify the bios to boot the the usb drive first.

Inside the windows installation, click the Repair you computer link at the bottom. Win7 may repair the installation for you, but its unlikely as it is picky about ISO versions and such.

You'll want to open a command prompt window and type the following:

Code:

    bcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup
    ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old
    bootrec /rebuildbcd

Reboot the computer.

If that doesn't work, try formatting your hard drive and doing a fresh installation from the USB Drive. Fingers crossed, it will take it.

 

Emike beat me too it (And in much better detail than I could have done) But that is how you would do it, follow it step by step and you should be where you need to be. Give some rep to Emike if you would please, he has been spot on in the last few threads I have seen him in.

 

Nice advice emike.. +1 rep. Emergency troubleshooting like this would obviously benefit layman like me when the time comes (or preferably accessible for peace of mind)

 

Superb answer emike. Id never heard of diskpart until earlier today while deleting the Alienware recovery partition from an SSD before sending it back.

Im going to save your post for the future and keep Win 7 on a memory stick just in case.

 

A little trick of the trade: Delete the ei.cfg file from the \sources folder after you copy win7 to USB, and you will be prompted at installation which edition of windows you want to install (basic, home, pro, ultimate, etc). You'll still need a valid license to activate the edition you installed. Kind of like a l33t install disk

Also, a really badly messed up boot record will remain bad even after an OSRI, so you may need to do a low level format. If this is the case, just re-open a command prompt window at the Windows installation like before, and type 'format c:'. That simple. Since we don't append the /q operator, it will take an hour or two to do the format, but it will clean everything up pretty well.

 

You should probably stop calling it a low-level format. LLF is a legacy type of formatting done in the DOS days when you had to provide a list of known-bad sectors

 

Yes your right. For those of use who grew up using LLF, the term kind of sticks. And you didn't need a list of bad sectors.

Modernly, when most people refer to a low level format (and many do), we simply mean to not use the /q command so that everything (besides the information provided by the HDD manufacturer) we zeroed out.

 

Might not be the right thread to ask, but what causes boot records to be messed up?

 

uummmmmmmmmmm, how about making it easy and using windows 7 usb-dvd tool or using wintoflash???? so much simpler. and faster.

 

ummmmmmmmmmmmmm, because there are billions of programs out there and I've been installing Vista/7 like this for years now so why change something that works.

 

that doesnt matter. why not make it simple for someone who just wants to get their computer going again without the hassle.

 

i.e. I did not know about that program.

 

Lol, I knew that one was coming...