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No Disk Drives are detected on my laptop

post #1 of 11
7/7/06 at 12:14pm
Thread Starter 
Hey everyone,

I am trying to reinstall windows on my alienware laptop and I am having trouble with the hard drive. For some reason Windows is not detecting my hard drive when I get to the partitioning stage of the reinstallation.

My drive is on a raid controller and I have tried the drivers that come with the laptop (Promise ATA/RAID drivers) and it doesn't seem to help.

I am thinking that it is either the IDE cable or the Raid controller. I am familiar with RAID controllers and usually the controller will show a load/detection screen directly after POST. However on my laptop it doesn't show anything 99%. Every once in a while the controller bios will show up and still never detect the drive.

Does anyone have any insight!?!

Model: D9T
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post #2 of 11
7/7/06 at 12:59pm
Did you get the RAID drivers from Alienware's support site? You'll need the correct one depending on whether you're using RAID or not.

RAID:
http://aliendl.alienware.com/Mobile/..._1.00.1.37.zip

Non-RAID: http://aliendl.alienware.com/mobile/..._1.00.0.29.zip

When XP starts loading from the disc, hit F6 (I think) to load the driver from floppy, though pen drive MIGHT work too, I'm not sure.

Hope this helps.
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post #3 of 11
7/7/06 at 1:55pm
Thread Starter 
Ya,

I tried both drivers (ATA non-Raid, and Raid) from the Driver CD that came with the laptop and from the alienware support site with no luck.

The other wierd thing that happens is when I am in the partition menu of the windows setup CD it will blue screen if I press either the up or down key. They might be a red herring but I thought I would mention it.
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post #4 of 11
7/7/06 at 6:50pm
Have you tried loading from a different XP disc? It could be the disc rather than a hardware error.
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post #5 of 11
7/8/06 at 12:32am
Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeJMSmith
Ya,

I tried both drivers (ATA non-Raid, and Raid) from the Driver CD that came with the laptop and from the alienware support site with no luck.

The other wierd thing that happens is when I am in the partition menu of the windows setup CD it will blue screen if I press either the up or down key. They might be a red herring but I thought I would mention it.
when you tried it did you have the drivers on a floppy?
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post #6 of 11
7/8/06 at 12:33am
probly a bad harddrive, happend to mine the first 2 days i had it, they sent me a harddrive and walked me thru install, fixed in 3 days
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post #7 of 11
7/9/06 at 10:13pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
when you tried it did you have the drivers on a floppy?

yes the drivers were on a floppy. I did standard F6 on CD load in an attempt to get the drive recognized.

Also, today a buddy lent me a hard drive to try and I got the same result. I am starting to get a little worried. Any other suggestions?
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post #8 of 11
7/10/06 at 2:38am
Again, tried another XP CD?

EDIT: I reread your first post >> can you get into the Promise controller thing during post and see if it recognizes your disk array? You might try setting the array up again...
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post #9 of 11
7/10/06 at 9:47am
Thread Starter 
I haven't tried a new cd yet. I will be trying one this morning and I will let you know how it goes.

Quote:
EDIT: I reread your first post >> can you get into the Promise controller thing during post and see if it recognizes your disk array? You might try setting the array up again...

Thats part of the problem. The promise controller bios doesn't even show up on boot 99% of the time. Every once in a while it will come up and attempt to detect a drive but never does. Otherwise you don't even see it. Have you ever seen anything like that?
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post #10 of 11
7/10/06 at 2:47pm
I've never seen anything quite like that, but it sounds to me like the RAID controller went bad and I hate to say it, but if that's the case you'll need to ship it back to AW to have it replaced. I know it sucks, but not being able to load windows or use the hardware in any way, shape, or form, sucks too. Good luck. You might try calling and explaining the entire situation to them.
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post #11 of 11
7/10/06 at 6:36pm
that sounds almost identical to my problems...if you remove the raid you can install xp as a master/slave setup just to check. you can call alienware and try just as single hard drive to make sure one isnt bad (mine was always the one next to the video card).

not sure what teh solution is since i am on HD #3 now.
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