M17xR1 constant rebooting

Well... it looks like I may have suffered a mbr failure on my hdd. I was working
on the laptop and stopped to eat dinner and when I came back I found the
computer hung at the starting Win 7 screen. Tried interupting the boot and
rebooted... then the laptop started looping reboots. I checked the Bios and all
seemed to be okay. Hit f12 and entered the system diagnostics and received a
2000-142 and 2000-146 on the hdd short test. Called Dell and was transfered
to Alienware tech support... tried to repair several times and could not. New
drive is on the way. I also had them send me the second carrier and the
interposer to add a second drive.

Fortunately I have a complete backup from the early morning.

Still, love the laptop... just wish I had done the smart thing and gotten 2 drives mirrored. That I can rectify.

Gene

 

Try booting from the OS DVD and in recovery options enter the console and type bootrec /FIXMBR.
Though I don't think it's an mbr problem. Maybe your HDD is ...gone. You can boot from another drive and run some test on the faulty one.

 

Aikimox,

Thanks for the suggestion, but yeah..I have already tried that. No joy...
but a new drive is in and Win 7 64 loaded. Will mirror when new drive arrives.
Like anything electronic if it is going to die it usually happens in the first 90
days. This was day 84....

Gene

 

Ugghhh what a week.

Got the hard drive yesterday and what was supposed to be the 2nd
mounting kit, which turned out to only be the interposer... Called Alienware
and they will ship one to me.. but when...

Installed the drive and that is where the frustration really begins.

Installed fresh copy of Win 7 64 Ult. Installed the drivers in the
recommended order and the wireless lan card no longer connects to the
network. Try a ton of things... nothing. Okay.. let's play this game again,,
format, clean install of Win7, then drivers...... 6 hours later I have it working
but with one exception, I can not install the nVidia beta driver as it kills the
connection. That was the only difference in the 2 installs. Will call
Dell/Alienware later this evening when I get home.

Gene

 

Well... once again the darn Broadcom wireless card is refusing to connect to
anything as soon as I load the beta drivers for my video cards. I am looking to
swap it out.

Gene