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AW Aurora R4 - no bootable devices found after installing bios A07
I seem to be having some odd problems after installing bios A07 on an Alienware Aurora R4 and hoping someone can point out something obvious I'm missing. The machine has the i7 3960K, 8GB ram, two AMD 6950 2GB's, a pair of Blu-ray drives, a couple of 2TB drives and a boot Crucial C300. The machine has been working fine on bios A03 but I stupidly decided to upgrade to A05 and the A07 ready for Windows 8 thinking the latest bios would be best. After applying the A07 bios the machine rebooted and then refused to start claiming there were no bootable devices, I checked the bios and it's correctly detected all five of the SATA devices but doesn't see the SSD as bootable. I stuck in the original 1TB drive the machine shipped with and ejected the pair of 2TB drives but it did exactly the same, checked the bios and the boot order did have the hard drive. I tried putting it to the top (USB bootable drives were first) but no difference so I tried F12, chose the 1TB drive and that booted but the AMD control centre came up claiming that one of the graphics cards has disappeared.
I put the Crucial C300 back in, again wouldn't boot automatically but started using the F12 option then immediately bluescreens and comes back to no bootable devices. Rather stupidly it looks like I haven't put the W8 iso somewhere externally (thought I had, can't see it) so it looks like I need to rerun the tool to get the iso which I can't do.
The only option that looks like it may be worth changing is the boot type, it's currently UEFI and I'm wondering if it needs to be legacy - I went to change it and there were dire warnings about it so I've left it. I've had a flick through the forum but I can't find much about A07, only A06 so don't know if there's an obvious solution to the problem.
On a side note the AW head seems to be stuck cycling through red and orange as if the machine is asleep which it shouldn't be doing as the machine is powered down, that is less of an issue compared to the dead PC though.
Edit - Making progress, it looks like the bios changed the bios mode from Legacy to UEFI - I noticed in the F12 list that my SSD (and everything else) was listed as legacy so changed the bios mode back to legacy and it's now booting normally. The SSD seems to be a lost cause though as it's bluescreening still, will see if it can take Windows 8 now.
John
Tesla1856
8 Wizard
8 Wizard
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17K Posts
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December 1st, 2012 18:00
Use another machine to re-run the tool, access your Microsoft account, and get another copy of ISO and Microsoft burning tool and your install key serial number.
You could also try booting the machine with "Live CD" and access existing drive (if you haven't erased them) and get the ISO.
Worst case, reinstall Win7 ... and do what I said in first sentence.
Johnmcl7
75 Posts
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December 1st, 2012 19:00
When I try it on another machine, I only get the option to buy another copy - I can't seem to skip that and go straight to the download option nor is there any option to sign into my account. I did check the other drives and thankfully I did create the iso so I've created the USB stick and it's installing now hopefully.
Will be interested to see if anyone else has a similar problem with A07.
John
Johnmcl7
75 Posts
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December 3rd, 2012 19:00
Just to finish this thread, the machine seems to be working fine on its new Win8 install and with the bios set back to Legacy instead of UEFI. I didn't spend much time trying to repair the Win7 install as I was planning to wipe it anyway although I suspect if I'd restored the image of the drive it would have been ok once the bios setting had been changed back.
John