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    XPS L501 won't boot

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by gatorsrule, Mar 6, 2011.

  1. gatorsrule

    gatorsrule Notebook Enthusiast

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    Installed SSD & original hard drive in optical caddy. Now it simply hangs after bios.... Anyone run into this?
     
    gatorsrule, Mar 6, 2011
    #1
  2. Tsunade_Hime

    Tsunade_Hime such bacon. wow

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    Does it even start to load Windows? Spam F8 on POST and Repair My Computer.

    Did you try the Dell Diagnostics? You could have failing hardware.
     
    Tsunade_Hime, Mar 7, 2011
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  3. gatorsrule

    gatorsrule Notebook Enthusiast

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    Boots fine without 2nd (original) hard drive in optical cadd
    Boots fine with optical drive in
    Boots fine if I use the original hard drive in the hd slot

    I am wondering if there is some type of bios change necessary to run a hard drive in the optical slot....
     
    gatorsrule, Mar 7, 2011
    #3
  4. Tsunade_Hime

    Tsunade_Hime such bacon. wow

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    Okay did you run the Dell Diagnostics? Are you 100% sure that drive is healthy/functional? A failing drive can be the cause of that. Also a bad motherboard.
     
    Tsunade_Hime, Mar 7, 2011
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  5. dkwhite

    dkwhite Notebook Deity

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    Sounds like a problem with the Caddy. (stating the obvious here).
     
    dkwhite, Mar 7, 2011
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  6. NoSlow5oh

    NoSlow5oh Notebook Evangelist

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    How is your boot sequence setup? You should put the CD/DVD optical at the very bottom so it tries to boot from it last, or if possible, remove it from being bootable. If your CD/DVD is set to first, I can see a possible conflict. I would boot into windows off the ssd, then hot install the caddy hdd, and go look at device manager to see what it displays. If you can boot from both drives, and they are both installed at the same time, the bios may get confused on which to use because it's probably not configured for two internal hdds, especially both of which are bootable.
     
    NoSlow5oh, Mar 7, 2011
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  7. gatorsrule

    gatorsrule Notebook Enthusiast

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    Thanks for the input all. It seems like this is a caddy issue as I have confirmed the hard drive works in a caddy in a different laptop and the original optical drive works. Time to order a new caddy.....
     
    gatorsrule, Mar 8, 2011
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  8. Matt2012

    Matt2012 Newbie

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    Did you ever solve this I have the same laptop a caddy from New Modeus and have got the same problem. I am about to get a new drive as I thought maybe a 5400 would work in the caddy better than the 7200 Seagate. The boot sequence is correct in the Bios and I can see that the second hard drive is recognised. Do I need to format the old boot drive so it dosent get confused which to boot from?
     
    Matt2012, Mar 26, 2011
    #8