CD/DVD Device Driver?

I'm trying to do a clean install of Win 7. It boots off of the dvd and after I click the install button in the gui, it asks for a device driver for the cd/dvd drive. I cant go any further than that and can't find a driver on any of my install DVDs. I have the blu ray reader combo drive. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

 

I googled this issue and it seems pretty wide spread. The only remedy by others seemed to change to ATA mode in the bios. I haven't tried it, and I don't want to do that since I am using RAID 0. Has anyone had this issue?

 

Are you sure ATA mode on a DVD drive would have any effect on your RAID? If that's all it comes down to, RAID is not that much faster anyhow. To get your machine up and running, I say at least try that solution.

 

Achilleus,

This issue is caused because the pre-installation environment doesn't know how to interact with the SATA/RAID chipset... It's really easy to fix.

To get things working as they should, you'll need a flash drive and the latest version of the chipset driver from the downloads section of the Dell website and an extraction utility such as 7zip of IZARC.

Once you download the driver file to your desktop, right-click and extract the contents to a folder on your desktop.

Inside that folder, you'll see an IDE folder. Open that folder.
Now, you should have a folder labeled for the operating system: Win764

Open that folder. Inside, you'll see several folder, but there should be one labeled SATARAID.

Go into the SATARAID folder and copy everything inside it to the flash drive.

With your M17x shutdown, plug the flash drive in and boot off of your install CD with the drive still plugged in. When the pre-installation environment complains that it can't find the driver, click browse and navigate to the flash drive.

Select all of the 'drivers' in the list with your shift key, and then allow it to install them. It may take several minutes.

The installation process will then continue.

It's crazy that Dell/Alienware has never released a knowledgebase article on this. However, after being in IT for over 15 years this is VERY common with anything running SATA or RAID.

- Denver

 

Thanks for the reply! That worked good. I was able to do the clean install of Win 7 ult. One strange thing is that at first I tried ahci legacy and native to do separate drives instead of raid. When going into the Win 7 install, it only showed one hard drive and nothing else. Not even the respawn partition. When going back to raid, it showed everything in the setup and I was able to re-partition and install. One other thing I have noticed is that on a cold boot or restart from windows, after I get past the post, it goes to a blinking cursor and stays there. I always have to do a ctl-alt-del for it to successfully go into windows. Not sure if this is a raid bug or what?

Thanks

 

Achilleus,

That too is a common problem...

Go into your BIOS setup (F2) to your boot order, highlight Hard Disk and then aarow down and select the NVSTRIPE array. Then exit the BIOS saving the change.

This is because the BIOS can't correctly find the boot block of the array. That should fix the issue permanently until you have to reinstall Windows again.

- Denver

 

I looked at the boot order and it shows the hard drive as the first boot device. Nvstripe is underneath when you expand the hard drive. I still have the blinking cursor and have to ctl-alt-del to on every cold boot or restart to get into windows. Thanks for any help.

 

You might want to try reflashing the A02 BIOS... I remember a forum member having a similar issue when A02 was released and it corrected the problem.

On mine, if I go into the boot order, select hard drive and then aarow down to NVSTRIPE and hit enter to select it and then save the settings the issue goes away immediately and doesn't return.

My guess is that there is a BIOS glitch the messes with detection of the array.

- Denver

 

Well, I went back in and changed the boot order to the dvd drive first. Then rebooted and the same cursor problem. Then rebooted and changed the boot order back on hard drive first and then hit enter on the nv stripe like you said. And, it booted normally. So, we will see if it lasts. Thanks for the help.