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Can someone hook me up with the respawn boot CD?

post #1 of 20
1/27/08 at 8:45pm
Thread Starter 
I lost my shortcut to the Alien Respawn 2.0 partition on my hard drive. The partition is intact and ready to respawn, but I cannot access it. It looks like the only way to gain access to it is with the Respawn boot CD, but one wasn't included with my system.

Can someone with the boot CD make an ISO for me? Alienware tech support is of no help.
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post #2 of 20
1/27/08 at 9:00pm
Sorry buzzin, I only have the 1.0 version of Respawn (which doesn't use a HDD partition).
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post #3 of 20
1/27/08 at 10:33pm
Thread Starter 
I'll give it a try at this point!
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post #4 of 20
1/27/08 at 10:35pm
It's just a copy of Norton's Ghost 8.0 corporate edition. It won't work for you unless you've made your own image of your install, and even then I'm not sure Vista plays nice with ghost images.
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post #5 of 20
1/28/08 at 12:34am
Thread Starter 
doh. you're probably right. maybe i can get an american on the tech support line to help me reinstall the shortcut to it.
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post #6 of 20
1/28/08 at 12:56am
I want to help you out for sure, but my Respawn is just completely different. Else I'd throw and image up on a hosting site for sure. You're better off pursuing a tech support fix or hoping someone with v2.0 comes along.
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post #7 of 20
1/28/08 at 1:08am
I sent you the link to the AW boot CD v2.0 that I uploaded, see if that works for you, buzzin'.
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post #8 of 20
1/28/08 at 1:11am
Thanks Spartan.
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post #9 of 20
1/28/08 at 1:11am
No problem Bfisch.
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post #10 of 20
1/28/08 at 11:35am
Thread Starter 
Thanks very much. I will try today and post back my results. I wish AW tech support was more helpful (first time AW owner).
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post #11 of 20
1/28/08 at 8:49pm
Thread Starter 
Didn't work... I get an OS not found message =(
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post #12 of 20
1/28/08 at 9:06pm
Sorry to hear that Buzzin. Are you going to reload Vista yourself or what? What did AW recommend?
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post #13 of 20
1/28/08 at 9:14pm
Thread Starter 
I reloaded it myself but they have not posted a lot of the drivers and software that comes with the system (and its not included on the CDs).
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post #14 of 20
1/28/08 at 9:21pm
Oh geez, that sucks big time. I wish I could help you Buzzin.
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post #15 of 20
1/28/08 at 10:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by buzzin View Post
Didn't work... I get an OS not found message =(
That's really unfortunate. Sorry that it didn't work for you Buzzin.
What drivers do you need? They might be here http://support.alienware.com/Support...downloads.aspx
also, did you try to access your HIVE yet??
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post #16 of 20
1/28/08 at 10:24pm
I'm feeling sorry for the OP and here's Spartan with a buncha tricks up his sleeve! GO SPARTAN GO!
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post #17 of 20
1/28/08 at 10:43pm
Thread Starter 
Drivers aren't in the Hive either, lol.
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post #18 of 20
1/28/08 at 10:45pm
Thread Starter 
Yay! I was able to figure out a fix on my own. Luckily I didn't have to rely on AW tech support or I would have been left to drown.

So what happened was the MBR was overwritten with a new Vista installation, thus the BIOS shortcut to Alien Respawn v2.0 was not coming up and the link in Windows was gone.

I had to locate the Intel SATA hard drive drivers on their website and put them on a floppy. I had a USB floppy drive, they are such a relic these days.

I then booted off a Norton Ghost 10 CD, pressed F6 to load the SATA drivers. My thinking was maybe they used Ghost to do the image.

Once in Ghost I was disappointed but poked around the extra tools they included. One allowed me to change which partition was the active partition. I selected the 8gig respawn partition and rebooted into Alien Respawn v2.0. It just finished a successful recovery of the Windows partition back to factory conditions. I did have to boot off the Ghost 10 CD after the respawn and set the active partition back to the correct one. Everything is working properly and back to factory shipped condition!

Please keep this thread to help out other users who will most certainly run into this issue at some point with the new m15x hard drive only respawn.

To AW's credit, this was a more difficult issue to figure out, but their front line of tech support acted like it was completely impossible and out of the question and I would have to live with not being able to access the respawn partition. No offense, but the Dell support guys in India are harder to understand but better at customer service. I think the AW techs are South American (based on the names) or Eastern European (based on the accents), but I didn't ask.

buzzin
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post #19 of 20
1/29/08 at 12:52am
Awesome Buzzin. Way to go and figure it out by yourself! (Who needs TS anyway)
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post #20 of 20
1/29/08 at 1:10am
Quote:
Originally Posted by buzzin View Post
Yay! I was able to figure out a fix on my own. Luckily I didn't have to rely on AW tech support or I would have been left to drown.

So what happened was the MBR was overwritten with a new Vista installation, thus the BIOS shortcut to Alien Respawn v2.0 was not coming up and the link in Windows was gone.

I had to locate the Intel SATA hard drive drivers on their website and put them on a floppy. I had a USB floppy drive, they are such a relic these days.

I then booted off a Norton Ghost 10 CD, pressed F6 to load the SATA drivers. My thinking was maybe they used Ghost to do the image.

Once in Ghost I was disappointed but poked around the extra tools they included. One allowed me to change which partition was the active partition. I selected the 8gig respawn partition and rebooted into Alien Respawn v2.0. It just finished a successful recovery of the Windows partition back to factory conditions. I did have to boot off the Ghost 10 CD after the respawn and set the active partition back to the correct one. Everything is working properly and back to factory shipped condition!

Please keep this thread to help out other users who will most certainly run into this issue at some point with the new m15x hard drive only respawn.

To AW's credit, this was a more difficult issue to figure out, but their front line of tech support acted like it was completely impossible and out of the question and I would have to live with not being able to access the respawn partition. No offense, but the Dell support guys in India are harder to understand but better at customer service. I think the AW techs are South American (based on the names) or Eastern European (based on the accents), but I didn't ask.

buzzin
Congrats on the fix buzzin! glad you figured this out.
It's ridiculous that AW doesn't even have these drivers out yet for your HIVE. What if people need to reformat or run into a similar trouble like you did? Perhaps they are waiting until the basic m15x is released before putting the drivers out.
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