Aurora R8, no boot issue

Go to this support page and clear the CMOS settings. It could be an issue with the BIOS update. And if this helps I would strongly suggest to not update the BIOS unless it specifically corrects a problem with your system. There have been too many posts in the forum about BIOS updates gone wrong.

I already reset the bios to optimized defaults when I was on phone with tech support. They mentioned that it’s likely the OS is corrupt. I’m not sure this would correct the issue. But I’ll try. 

Resetting factory dedaults in bios and clearing CMOS are completely different things. 

Have you upgraded your RAM?  If so, remove the non dell RAM and restart the pc.

After updated the BIOS with the urgent 1.0.9 my R8 wouldn't start either.   

I had to clear the CMOS and then it spent some attempts at rebooting until it started up again.  So now its working perfectly.  

Was worried for a bit.  I do have non factory RAM installed.  I don't know if whether removing that RAM would have solved it the same as clearing the CMOS because I only did the latter.

I've heard a lot of people complaining about this.  I suspect Dell may have further rolled back support for non-Dell RAM.  In which case you will encounter the same issue as soon as your AWCC updates BIOs back to 1.0.9.  May I ask what RAM and speed you have installed? 

Yes, unfortunately I reset the CMOS jumper and I reset windows. As I’m going through installation with Cortana the monitor goes black all sudden as it’s setting up windows. I’m guessing the Alienware updates corrupted the SSD or the OS. It’s weird though because if I run a hardware scan in Support Assist it reports no issues. I ordered a replacement PC because I’m totally clueless on what happened. The only option is the SSD is corrupt or the motherboard. Pretty ridiculous considering I paid a lot of money and only just got the PC. Alienware should not be pushing out these BIOS updates.......

I disabled auto-updates from Dell.  Definitely don't want all the junk they're pushing out. I still get the notifications.  Which is useful because if there's something I want I download it myself manually. 

How did you disable the updates? 

Under settings > privacy, uncheck this box: 

@hutt555 @r72019 @eastsider2 @JOcean 

Having the same issues for a while now too. Fresh windows installs will work fine for about a week before corrupting. I went through 2 different brands of NVME M.2 drives and ditched them for a PNY SSD. All these drives were only used as pure boot drives and I am using a Samsung QVO 2TB as a slave for programs and the factory HDD for Media. I upgraded myself to a RTX 2080 Founders and an i9-9900k as well as 32GB of HyperX 3200Mhz RAM..

So I'm still getting the same issue now even with the traditional SSD as the boot drive. It was working fine until I did a few things. 

1. Installed AWCC/OC controls.

2. Updated to 1.0.9

I'm thinking it's the AWCC because it did the same thing for me on 1.0.7.

I was using MSI afterburner for a day or so before removing it and going back to AWCC, even though for some reason AWCC won't show my CPU temp/voltage/frequencies anymore. I did my usual RTX 2080 OC and also OC the ram to XMP1 (which I can do in the BIOS whenever AWCC isn't installed too). I boost my RTX clock by 110mhz and memory by 700mhz. 

So anyway I can usually get into windows by using my recovery USB in command prompt and typing in bcdedit /set {default} safeboot network. Then I type exit after that and continue to windows 10 ( disregard any popup error after exiting and have the PC reboot).

Attempting to rebuild the MBR or fixing boot sectors via sfscan is fruitless as I run into permission errors. I've tried every way to rebuild the boot record but it never works. I usually do a fresh install after that via deleting all partitions on that drive and formating. I'm going to NOT install AWCC this time, and I already rolled back to BiOS 1.0.7 during this process. We'll see what happens and I've book marked this page to update just in case. This is getting extremely frustrating and I'm feeling at this point I've paid for a PSU, a case, and some wire management. Will probably be my last Dell purchase, and I'll go forward building my own.

Running Windows 10 Home 64-bit without any bloatware at this point. Oh and this problem persists across both RAID & AHCI configurations. The other 2 NVME M.2 drives I tried and had the same problem with were the Sabrent Rocket 512Gb and Samsung 970 EVO Plus 256Gb.

**UPDATE**

Did a thorough (roughly 90 minute) troubleshooting process with the Dell support team yesterday. They advised a complete wipe of all 3 drives I have installed. Upon doing a fresh install of Windows 10 for the umpteenth time I noticed something I never paid attention to. On my secondary drive that is only used for Programs/Games I had a small 16mb partition labeled MB MSR (Reserved). It was not present on my boot drive, even after reinstalling windows many times. So I deleted all partitions and got every drive back down to unallocated. After assigning windows to be installed on my boot drive, it then created the correct partitions on THAT drive and it included MB MSR (Reserved) 16MB. I installed windows 10 home normally, updated all the drivers via my service tag on the Dell website, and the correct video driver from Nvidia since I upgraded my GPU. I DID NOT install AWCC/OC controls this time, or any other dell software. After creating simple volumes for my other 2 drives via Disk Management I rebooted again and started up a new windows 10 installation just to see what partitions were currently present. Everything seemed to have remained the same, I had DISK 0 (Programs/Games) without any partitions besides Primary, DISK 1 (Media) without any partitions besides Primary, and DISK 2 (WINDOWS 10 HOME) with the following partitions of Recovery 529MB, MB System 100MB, MB MSR (Reserved) 16MB, and Primary 111.2GB. I'm hoping that the previously mentioned 16MB partition that was created on DISK 0 somehow and never on DISK 2 was causing some sort of a conflict. It's only been 1 day so far, I promised to keep the Dell support team updated and I will also keep this forum updated. This issue seems to be a difficult one to troubleshoot. 

You may be on to something. When you clean install Windows 10 it is always a good idea to disconnect all other drives until you have Windows 10 completely installed and the system boots with no problems.

For future people having the issue that the bios update fails and having a black screen. If you have a non sell ram installed, turn off your pc and unplug it. Start your pc again and the bios update will finish. Afterwards plug the non dell ram in again. Had the problem quite a few times and that resolved the issue every time.