Computer help.
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Cargo Master
Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 2,117
Likes: 8
From: Over Yonder, MN
Computer help.
Well I’ve never come across a computer I couldn’t fix, that didn’t suffer terminal physical damage that is, until now. So I’ve got my friends Alienware m7700/Clevo D9T, something I’ve repaired dozens of times. I’m convinced one of the designers was on the easy bake oven team. So it’s giving me the fun no operating system error, I figured his hard drive bite the bullet as its twin failed a few months prior. So I slap in a new one get ready for the fun reinstall and nothing… no hard drives present. So to cut to the chase I know the hard drives to be good, everything else of any consequence at this stage appears functional, I believe it has the fasttrak promise 378 raid controller. On post it used to splash up promise yada yada, press Ctrl + F2 to modify the array; that is no longer the case, the hard drives are not visible in the bios, but they never were. So I believe either something in the firmware has corrupted, of which I can’t find a version anywhere on the internet to reflash with, or something physically gave out in the controller, but I just put that motherboard in there about a year ago.
So, any suggestions?
So, any suggestions?
Posting Guru
Joined: Dec 2003
Posts: 1,157
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From: Wichita, KS
Is the raid controller built in to the board, or a separate card? If you're sure the drives are good, then my guess is the board is bad. Guess you could look and see if the raid controller has been disabled in the bios, can't remember if you can do that or not. On the ones I've worked on, it seems like drives showed up in the bios if they were connected to the board, raid controller or not, but it's been a while....most of the raid systems I've worked on that I can actually remember are the newer sata. Only thing I can think of, and you probably already did, is that sometimes the bios has an option for raid or ide (IIRC?). I never played with that to see if it might affect booting.
I did work on a Dell this week where owner, or someone, had got into the bios and unselected the hard drive as a boot option. Had to have the windows CD in the drive so it would boot, and then it would load and run just fine.
I did work on a Dell this week where owner, or someone, had got into the bios and unselected the hard drive as a boot option. Had to have the windows CD in the drive so it would boot, and then it would load and run just fine.
Moderator
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 164,379
Likes: 82
From: MA
If it is an add on card try reseating it.. If it's built in then it looks like the motherboard is bad..
Assuming that all you did was pop out a HD and put in another one..
Are you trying to put 2 drives in at once or one at a time??
What are the jumper settings on the drives??
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Cargo Master
Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 2,117
Likes: 8
From: Over Yonder, MN
Sadly the controller is on the motherboard. The bios provides a raid or ata option, but it has no effect. Just one drive for now configured to main/single, which is the same setup it was using before it died.
Moderator
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 164,379
Likes: 82
From: MA
You might want to try adding a controller card.. The rest of the MB may be good..
Postmaster
Joined: Jul 2003
Posts: 2,628
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From: Calgary, Canada
just out of curiosity, have you reset the bios to defaults. I've had a good handfull of cases where nothing seemed to work then as a sort of last resort use the default bios settings and things start working again. Then one by one optimize the settings to known good setting or until the pc fails to boot again and find the problem that way.
More often than not, the computer is fine and although they didn't admit it, it was probably the user messing in the BIOS and forgot what they did so they couldn't reverse it.
Strange that the HD's don't show up in the BIOS...
More often than not, the computer is fine and although they didn't admit it, it was probably the user messing in the BIOS and forgot what they did so they couldn't reverse it.
Strange that the HD's don't show up in the BIOS...
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Cargo Master
Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 2,117
Likes: 8
From: Over Yonder, MN
It’s a laptop so the ability to add things is limited. I haven’t set the bios to factory defaults, though I’ll try that. He claims it was just defragmenting when all went to pot. As far as the bios not showing the hard drives, I believe it’s because the raid controller is independent of the bios and even though it’s integrated with the motherboard it would be my guess that it’s still run through the pci bus.
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