HOW TO: Preserve AlienRespawn - stock drive to aftermarket drive / AlienRespawn Q&A

@steviejones133 - Steve, out of curiosity, have you attempted to break the RAID array and install Windows just to one SSD to see if the AlienRespawn problem persists? If that "fixes" the problem, maybe after doing the install using RST to create the RAID0 membership within Windows would be a successful workaround. (If you already posted this, I apologize for missing it.) It might even be that RST and the Dell modded Samsung firmware have a conflict. So, install to one SSD, install Respawn before installing RST. If Respawn works properly at that point in time, install RST and see if it still work correctly. If it still does at that point, create the RAID0 within Windows and see if it becomes broken or still function correctly.

@J.Dre - You may not have the same experience, but I found Respawning from HDD to SSD made the SSD run a bit slower. I tested it twice and the SSD ran better (higher read/write performance) after a clean install.

 

I haven't tried that, mainly because Gary is running a single Dell PM830 512gb un-raided and he has the same problem. You may have seen that Gary was able to successfully install AWR to his XT drive......that basically leaves the SSD's themselves being the only common denominator for failure - as I see it, anyways. I've PM'd Pablo and even volunteered to try it out (if Dell wanna send me a small capacity HDD - which I would return, of course) just to see if AWR then installs fine for myself, as well as Gary.

Also, worth pointing out now that you mention RST - my last attempt at installing AWR ended up with a fail - at that time, I had no IRST installed at all - the only things I had done over and above installing the OS was to update Windows itself, enable the full .NET features and install the XML links you suggested and it was still a fail. So, maybe that rules IRST out as a possible culprit....

It looks even more likely that all roads lead to Rome.......

 

I missed the post that GaryO had success with the Momentus XT. I knew he was planning to check that out, but missed the post where he did. Sorry, got in too big of a hurry and did not read the posts. (Good thing those posts were not a rattlesnake, or I might have been bitten, LOL.) Good work, GaryO. +1 Rep.

Unless I am missing something, this leaves no room for speculation. I think Alienware Engineering should look into providing a firmware update that allows Dell/Samsung PM830 SSD owners to flash to normal retail firmware. That should be the easiest and least costly, and most customer centric, method of addressing the problem. (Of course, this is assuming that firmware change is possible without bricking the SSD.) That way there is no data loss or downtime associated with data transfer, parts exchanges, etc.

It certainly would be nice to know the reasoning behind the proprietary drive firmware (for both Samsung SSD and some of the Seagate Momentus drives) that Dell has been implementing.

 

No need for apologies, Bro.

I don't know the logistics/possibility of being able to flash a retail firmware onto a Dell OEM drive - could well end up with an expensive paperweight! - if that may be the case, I can imagine a long, drawn out process where someone has to re-write firmware that does work properly. Having full access to Samsung SSD tools would be a BIG plus in my book....Samsung Magician will not work with the Dell firmware, according to Samsung (whom I contacted over this) they say it will not function correctly. Therefore, we can't update firmware in the same way that retail owners can - we HAVE to wait for a revised Dell firmware which could take a while. If we could update via Magician, I would have flashed my OEM's to Retail a LONG time ago because we have been TRYING to get Dell to resolve the issues that exist already with Dell firmware regarding poor read/write in comparison to the PM830's Retail Brother.....Dell have yet to acknowledge that one fully.....

IF we can use the retail firmware, that looks like the easiest fix - how that would get implemented is another story!

Of course, our findings here seem to point to firmware being the issue - I can't see it being anything else right now. I guess we will just have to wait and see what Dell will do about it and how quickly they can resolve this. Gonna cross my fingers now! ...LOL

@ Mr. Fox - should this be in a separate thread? - I know it's related to AWR but it goes deeper than the "run of the mill" questions.....

 

Since it is related to Respawn with an SSD purchased from Dell/Alienware, I think it is OK here.

I wonder what would happen with the AlienRespawn installation if you reboot Windows 8 with Driver Signature Enforcement disabled before installing Respawn? Have you given that a try yet?

This is absolutely REQUIRED to install the 680M driver under Windows 8 in the M18x R1. This is because Windows 8 does not permit the installation to go forward with the INF mod. It would be very cool if Respawn installs correctly with DSE disabled if it continues working properly after rebooting. It could be a situation where Windows 8 is blocking something in the Respawn installation routine because of the Dell firmware mod on the Samsung SSD.

I am still looking for a way to permanently disable DSE for Windows 8. To me, that is just an unnecessary "feature" for Windows 8 that implements draconian control over the system. I really like Windows 8, but this type of restriction on end users doing whatever they feel like doing with their computer hardware is very displeasing. To me, that really diminishes the value of Microsoft's OS and makes a PC act too much like a crApple system for my taste.

 

Well, I tried disabling DSE and it made no apparent difference, in my case, anyway. Was worth a shot.

One other thing that crossed my mind - Dell issue SSD's are either Dellized versions of two manufacturers, one being Samsung, the other LiteOn. Now, I wonder if anyone with LiteOn SSD's has run into the same trouble - I am imagining not, but could be wrong.

 

Depending on the individual, some folks may have no idea what SSD they have. Some might even be afraid to take off the bottom cover to find out. I suspect you might be right about the LiteOn not having a problem. I suppose it depends on exactly what was done to screw up the firmware and how Windows 8 reacts to or interacts with those changes. It may be a change that could interact incorrectly with Windows 8 and cause a problem no matter what brand the drive is. I wish we had more details on this, but I am confident that Dell/Alienware is going to get it straightened out.

 

Bumping to see if there has been any developments on a fix for the Respawn problem yet.....

 

Another bump to see what's going on about this issue - are Dell looking into it? - any info from the rep's on the forum would be great.....

 

I have a general query, if I uninstall respawn (to cut down on processes etc.) can I still use the USB recovery drive I created using respawn if required?

 

Yes. You do not have to have AWR installed to boot from the recovery media you made via USB. Unless you have the "paid for" full version of AWR, the only thing you can really do with it anyway is make recovery media, so it' somewhat pointless having it remain after you have created them.

 

My factory settings Respawn Point won't work! Every time I boot into the USB I put it on, AlienRespawn's dialog box comes up with "The system recovery image cannot be found. Please make sure your recovery media is inserted and restart your PC." What am I doing wrong? I've tried twice.

 

Have you tried different USB ports?

 

I've tried both front slots and one rear slot. It baffles me because shouldn't it work if it already is booting from the USB? Do I need to take out all extra things connected to USB ports? (like my controller and mic)?

 

I've always ensured that the recovery USB is the only device plugged in - never liked the thought of my machine trying to boot from my mouse or something

If you still have the recovery partition in tact, you could always try creating another recovery USB (or optical discs) and see if that works if the above doesn't make a difference.

 

haha yeah that's what I was thinking. I'm burning a recovery DVD now so I'll use that and see what happens.

Update: Seems the disk option worked! Boots into Respawn just fine. I'll be keeping this disk in a safe location.

 

Great stuff! - Glad you got it working.

 

Hi I am a very new alienware user and I just bought alienrespawn. I am bit disappointed with the functionality. I can create only one backup per drive although I think I saw on the ad that I can to incremental. Suppose to create multiple backups I have to use all my external disks? Also I can't find how to exclude from backup files according to their extensions.

I have not tried yet backing up on the C: drive. Is there when I have the option to do incremental or am backing up in full again?

 

Hi, I have it doing incremental and I believe it's in the free version but I did buy the full product. If you know what you are doing with backup software then it's not flexible enough do things like 'exclusions based on file type'. More aimed at the 'uninformed' user .

One feature that I liked was that after an SSD replacement it informed me I didn't have a recovery partition, and do I want to create one? Nice, it gave me my own 'factory restore' point

 

MickyD1234, thanks for your prompt reply. As you guessed I am an Acronis user. I understand that A.R. has not the wealth of Acronis' options, but I am trying to understand: I am allowed to have only one full back up per removable HDD, is this correct? The incremental backup that you are doing is at the protected partition of Alienware or at an external HDD?

If the current backup deletes the previous one, its not incremental as I cannot choose any back up I want from way back, just the last one.

 

It is saying that I have incremental 'full system backups' on an external drive. The system partition is not being used at all (AFAIK). The incremental is broken at the moment on mine as well though, as I have a list in my log file but when I look at the save location I am only seeing one 'userdiff' folder. It did work on my original installation

The external drive backup ('file and folder' although you have to override this) also creates incremental restore points within it but there is a big gotcha. By default, all it will backup is docs and pictures. You have to create a new plan/profile and go through it. I thought I had full backups of my external drive but when I checked it was only .txt's, and .jpg's!

There are a lot better backup programs for the experienced user - I'm just too lazy

EDIT: If you get a fix from dell please PM me it

 

Hello BatBoy, here's the situation:

I have an M18X R2 with 3 SSD of 250GB each.

When I got it delivered I quickly made a USB recovery drive using the Alienware software.

Now what happened is that I update from windows 7 to 8 and after a while I started having some compatibility issues. So I decided to revert to windows 7.

When I started the operation to revert to factory default, windows started resting my PC and it froze at 61% for more than 12 hours. So I shut down the PC and restarted the whole thing the problem is that I couldn't carry the operation anymore because there has been an error on one of my drives, and during startup I could see that one of my 3 drives had a red message saying "error 0".

So I had to delete the partitions and started all from scratch.

_ I now have 3 partitions in RAID 0.
_ Bios set to RAID on the SATA
_ Boot to Legacy


When I tried to install the latest Alienrespawn version on my laptop the first time it said that I dont have enough disk space for restore, and when I chose OK it uninstalled the whole Alienrespawn software.

When I rebooted I saw that a recovery partition has been made of 12GB, I tried to install again Alienrespawn and unfortunatelly it kept saying this message: "AlienRespawn cannot be installed because your hard drive does not have a backup copy of your factory image."

I am offshore and my fiancée has uploaded me the USB recovery I first made, so now I am waiting to download it - about 7GB

Do you have any solutions for me please ?

Thank you in advance

Maio

 

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but the new Respawn is Win 8 only? Can you still download a win 7 version?

 

Yep. This link should help: http://alwchecker.alienrespawn.com/alwchecker-en.html

 

Ok I hv the R1 and I copied the whole of recovery drive to the usb (dint use AW respawn), made new partitions to the same drive did a clean os install, now can I go back to the factory state using the usb backup?

 

Not sure that will work, I've never tried copying the recovery partition and restoring it to a drive with the OS on it. Typically, I've used AWR to do that - let us know how it works out if you try it out as it would be interesting to see if it actually allow you to then recover from the partition.

 

All,

wonder if you can help me.. Due to some virus/malware issue i deciede i need a new start. The problem with a fresh win7 install is that it would take me ages to download all the new drivers from dell site. I have found the alien respawn factory image (at boot F8, repair computer, etc) but after clicking on the image i get: "you don`t have enough space" error message.
I have not made any changes to my original setup of my laptop.
I have a 64GB mSata SSD as cache set up in Raid0 with a 500Gb HDD.
any suggestions?

 

Instead of trying to boot from the recovery partition or repairing via F8 (assuming you still have the recovery partition on your drives - check by start>disk management>enter and you will see your drive partitions etc) you could try making fresh recovery media and booting from that instead via F12 when your machine is booting. If you have the AlienRespawn software on your machine, simply open it up, navigate to create recovery media and follow the steps to create a USB or Optical recovery media.

Once you have made that recovery media, try booting from it. Before you shutdown your machine, insert the media (USB or Disc 1) and at the splash screen, hit F12 repeatedly to access the one time boot menu, From there, select to boot from USB or CD/DVD (according to your media type) and it *should* go through the process of restoring you machine to factory defaults.

Backup anything you may want to keep as you will lose all data by restoring to factory settings.

 

Thanks for the fast response StevieJones
The problem with that is, that:
1. I click Alien Respawn, nothing happens
2. I can go to Alien autopsy, and from there, i can go to A. Respawn, but then when clicking create recovery media , again nothing happens.
I do have my recovery partition still, i started up win7 installed, loaded the raid drivers on a USB and were able to see my drive, with the 3 partitions. 1. OEM , 2. Recovery, 3. Primary
tried in safe mode, no luck, as AR is not designed to work in Safe mode or some silly error message like this comes up.

 

You mean nothing happens when you try and open AlienRespawn from the start menu?

 

Yes exactly.
also , when going from alien autopsy, and click on the recovery creation, not even an hourglass or nothing.

 

Hmmmm. Odd. I guess as it's not allowing you to do anything at all, you could perhaps try uninstalling the current version of AlienRespawn via Control Panel > Add/Remove programs. Restart and re-download and install it again from this link: http://alwdownload.alienrespawn.com/alwdownload-en.html (on the right of the screen, download link is located under the green text "Easy Step 2"). That might work as maybe your current AWR files are corrupt in some way.....

 

I know it`s weird, the whole laptop became weird.. that`s why i want to return to clean version somehow.
OK, thanks, I shall try that!

 

The other thing you could try is a system restore to a point when you didn't have any issues......

 

System restore is not an option... they all disappeared. I know for sure i created one last month, just before i started updating the video drivers, and even used it to revert back after some mishaps.
But now, none of them are there

 

Did you create recovery media when you first got the machine? - easiest thing to do would be to boot from that - if you have it. Otherwise, as you cant roll back and your current AWR install isn't working, I imagine that re-installing AWR might be the best thing to try....

EDIT: Just a thought here....when you get the error message about "not enough space", is AWR giving you an option on which drive to respawn to? - only thinking that it *might* be trying to respawn to your mSata instead, which would obviously be too small. I wonder if it would work if you temporarily stopped using the mSata as a cache drive......

 

No, unfortunatly i made the mistake of not creating a backup image at the first place... I trusted the good old recovery point will work just fine, and it did when i needed it.
will not make the same mistake again for sure but for now, no, i don`t have anything saved.
I did uninstall, restart, re-install, restart , and it`s exactly the same... not starting up AR, and when i go through autopsy i click create recovery media - nothing happens.

my thoughts exactly.. but no it`s not giving me an option which drive to respawn to.

how should i go on about disabling mSata as cache? At boot press CTRL+I i guess, and then? :$

 

I don't have a cache drive (nor ever had one to be entirely sure of this) but if you open Intel RST (Start>All Programs>Intel>Rapid Storage Technology) you *should* be able to turn caching on or off via the RST control panel. Again, I'm not entirely sure this would do anything to help, it was just a thought.

 

No, this wasn`t it...
any other suggestions?

 

Ok, actually Stevie... I just managed to start up AR in safe mode , running it as administrator worked! (maybe due to the re-install?)
So... i have AR running. When i went to go back to factory settings, same procedure, it re-stated my laptop, and eventually i ended up again with the same error message: not enough space.

What if I`d create a USB recovery media? would that help? Would that just kinda copy the recovery partion information to the USB? or that would create a restore point as of now (the screwed up win7 i have ) and put that onto a USB?

also, it mentions USB stick... can i use an external harddrive? I don`t have a 16GB USB at hand, but have 2 external drives i use for storage. Would it wipe it off?

 

Well, it's moving in the right direction, Mike!

You wont be able to use an external HDD to make a recovery image - unless it's eSata - because it won't boot. Is it asking you for a USB of that size? - if you don't have one, you could use DVD's instead. I'd certainly have a stab at creating recovery media, when you have the media at hand. If you can do that successfully, you should be able to boot from it successfully.

 

no, it`s not an eSata or at least not that i`m aware it is sorry, my HW knowledge is running low now
It asks for an 8GB USB stick... and of course i have only a 2 GB... :S

will try to procure one (it`s harden then you think , i`m in irak , as an expat it`s a no-go to local shops for me) and will do a recovery media and try to boot from that. So would that take me back to factory settings? not taking an image of the current situation correct?

 

It's okay, Mike. No need for apologies!

Chances are that your external drive is just a normal USB drive so let's count that out. Your outta luck on the USB at the moment but...do you have a couple of blank DVDr's floating about (not re-writable ones) because if you do, you can use them. You could use CDr's but you would need a bunch of 'em to amount up to the image size.

If you can create recovery media, basically all that this process is doing is taking the image on your HDD that is stored in your recovery partition and putting it on to disk/USB. From that point, if you can boot from either, technically it should put your machine back to day one from the factory as that's the imagine in the recovery partition.

 

No, no DVD available.... it`s OK, i`ll get a USB stick big enough somehow.
That sounds good... I hope i can get the recovery media created. wish me luck And thanks for all your help!

 

Actually.. how do i know if an external drive is eSata or not?
my two HDDs are not, they are simple storage drives for sure, but i just found a WD My book live 1TB Home network drive in the office cabinet
it doesn`t say it on the box, how can i be sure?
it has it`s own power cord, so does it mean it`s eSata?

Edit: never mind, this thing is a wifi external HDD, so no way i can connect it to the laptop via USB, there is only a LAN socket on it.

will just try to get a USB stick

 

Well, your HDD would need a Sata connection and not just USB. If you had an internal HDD inside an external Sata enclosure, that would could work. Most external's are not eSata so I'm guessing that you wont be able to boot from it.

 

Well, having a USB stick did not resolve my problem either... I`m getting the exact same error message:
"you don`t have enough space on your disk "

what am I doing wrong??

 

Stevie,
just thought I let you know I did manage to restore my factory settings using Alien Respawn. The reason why i wanted originally to re-install win7 as AR did not work at all.
Then, I managed to start it up in Safe Mode, running it as Admin, but then i got a " you don`t have enough disk space" error message.
the final solution which worked for me was:
1. Format a USB stick
2. Put the Raid drivers on it (thanks Radji for that, without this in Win7 installer I could not see any drive details and this became essential)
3. In BIOS raise the rank for USB to have priority over HDD
4. Start up in Safe Mode, run AR , create a USB recovery media on USB stick which is at least 8GB (or DVD)
5. Put win7 DVD in , and reboot, load from DVD drive to start up Win7 installer
6. Go to install Win7 , at the screen where you have to select a drive I did not see nothing. Here comes handy the USB stick. Important! Do not have a USB mouse plugged in ! I did and for a while i could not load the RAID drivers from the USB stick, as I did not see the drive at all. After ( by desperation really) I removed the USB mouse and rebooted, restarted the whole win7 installer process I could see my USB stick, and I could load the Raid drivers, and finally I saw my C drive and the 3 partitions.
7. The reason AR sent me the error message disk is full was right in front of me.... Partition 3 said Total space: 460 GB , Free space: 0 GB.
I had to format partition 3 (leave Partion 2 - Recovery intact! ), erase all data from it ( so make sure you save all your important files to an external drive) , then quit the installer and reboot, plug in the other USB stick with the AR recovery media on it, and boot from that (here comes handy if you put USB as first boot option in BIOS) this time, I could run AR recovery and go back to original Factory settings without that annoying error message: "you don`t have enough disk space". In just about 15-20 min I started up windows as it came from the factory

I hope this will help someone who has the same problem.
thanks for all your help !

 

Wow, that's one heck of a workaround! - I'm glad you got it up and running at the end of the day, Mike. I wonder why it had to be such a long drawn out process to recover from (or to create) recovery stuff made by AW/Dell. I've never experienced having to do such a workaround but it's good to know that you found a way to respawn and I'm sure it will come in handy for quite a few people who may run into the same difficulties.

 

I put Win8 on my M14x R1. I've had some issues so now want to go back to Win 7. However, I don't have AlienRespawn.
I just downloaded the Win8 version and I have the IDS UI issue that you had Stevie. I'm not sure how to fix it. It's impossible to burn a recovery disk like this!