Need help with Alienware laptop BIOS

[KnuX]

I'm going to be as specific as I can be becasue I really need to fix this problem ASAP.

I bought an Alienware 7700 Area-51 laptop and all I've been getting is problems. Video card faliure, Viruses? and this.

It was working fine a few days ago, RIGHT after I had just got it back from having a new video card replace the defective one. I was getting re aquanted with my computer when it suddently froze. I've had computers freeze before so I didn't saee a problem. I restarted my computer and I haven't been able to enter windows since.

At first I noticed that the POST ended itself with the message "operating system not found"

Upon closer look, after "Scanning for IDE drives" the POST informed the that there is "No Drive attached to FastTrak controller. No BIOS is installed."

Then it would resume the completion by saying "Operating System not found"

I gave up on trying to recover all my data. I'll do anything to get it to work.
I can't reinstall Windows beause it wont detect my drives.

They're two 60 gigs connected through RAID and they never had a problem before.

While in POST it informs me that my BIOS is a FastTrak 378 tm BIOS 1.00.1.35 Promise Technology.

After clicking F2 to enter Setup Utility it says on top
"Phoenix cME FirstBIOS Pro Setup Utility.

I don't know what to do. I hope I provided enough information. Please help.

 

[KnuX]

Also, I'm not an expert on laptops or anything so if you know what the problem is and what I have to do, don't move to fast. I wont know very many technical terms ect.

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

What level of RAID are you using? Are either of your HDD's detected in the BIOS?

If neither are detected, remove RAID and reset your BIOS to default.

If one of them is detected in the BIOS, hopefully you know enough to at least find your way to the HDD's physically? If you can, reseat them. If that doesn't do anything, I would start pointing toward hardware failure to some degree, and it's likely one of your HDD's, as I somehow doubt the host adapter(s) on your motherboard have failed. This would also explain the message, "Operating System not found".

If one of your drives has failed and you are using RAID 0, your data is gone. However, if you are using any other level of RAID your data should be okay.

 

[KnuX]

My HDDs are not detected in BIOS.
My Default settings are RAID.
I don't know what to see if I'm using RAID 0 or 1 or ect.

Howerver, I switched back to default settings. Switched to ATA mode and restarted.

--------------

Detecting ......
BIOS is not installed.

--------->

Operating System not found

--------------

I'll go into my BIOS and Reset back to RAID for now...

 

[Nodsu]

You are mixing up two BIOSes here. You have your system BIOS - Phoenix and the BIOS in the RAID controller (FastTrak). They are completely separate and have no connection between each other.

It looks like the RAID controller is unable to find the hard drives. The drives may be disconnected (maybe you bumped the cable when messing around with the system innards?).

 

[KnuX]

Okay... Well, I only know how to get into one of the BIOS settings. That's by pressing F2.

I've connected and reconnected the drives several times. Nothing has changed. Checking the drives connection is the first thing I did.

Someone said they've had this problem before and they don't remember how they fixed it but they know the used a fixdisk and ran some programs. They ended up having to reinstall the OS.

The link to the Fix Disk is here:
Will innclude in another post...

I mounted the ISO and burned it. I have the boot disk, I just don't know what to do with it.

 

[KnuX]

Apparently I have to have 5 posts.

 

[KnuX]

Anyways, here's the link I recieved.:
http://www.hazardousgear.com/HAZARDOUS_GEAR/Boot_CD_SJTech2008.html

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Unless I'm missing something, that just looks like a knock off of UBCD and I'm not sure what you're aiming to do with the utilities on their disk. If your system BIOS will not detect the BIOS, the issue likely lies within your RAID controller and you won't be reinstalling the OS if your PC can't even recognize that there are HDD's attached .

If you managed to get your HDD's detected and there is still an issue with the OS being detected, run a repair installation of Windows or complete this guide.

 

[Tedster]

https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic75555.html