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11 Posts
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34951
July 19th, 2014 22:00
Alienware Aurora R4 goes from BIOS to blinking cursor
My brother turns on his Alienware Aurora R4, running Windows 7 (64-bit) and BIOS version A06, and the BIOS splash screen comes up as usual, the loading bar gets approximately 25% of the way full, then it beeps once and the screen goes black with a flashing cursor (underscore) in the top, left, corner and just sits there.
No recent changes have been made to the machine (hardware or software), and it hasn't had any issues previously; however, he somehow managed to unplug the machine while it was running the night before, and apparently the boot to blinking cursor was the first boot since.
I really have no idea where to go from here in terms of diagnosing the problem, but I have a sneaking suspicion it has an easy fix...
Any help is appreciated, I haven't found many similar problems through google...
Mnethses
11 Posts
0
August 5th, 2014 22:00
We eventually figured out he over filled his hard drive to the point windows couldn't boot; hopefully this information helps someone else.
Mnethses
11 Posts
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July 21st, 2014 13:00
Update: We can't get into boot options ect. and the machine's behavior doesn't change when the (only) hard-drive is removed; so that essentially rules out the hard-drive or anything on it as the problem, as best as I can figure, leaving the motherboard or the BIOS as the likely issue.
Any thoughts from people who know what they're talking about?
Alienware-Naomi
1.8K Posts
0
July 22nd, 2014 14:00
Hi!
Follow the instructions here to run an ePSA diagnostic to check for hardware errors. If nothing comes, try a clean Windows installation as explained in this video.
Let me know how it goes!
scrappylucie
3 Posts
0
July 26th, 2014 11:00
Mnethses
11 Posts
0
July 26th, 2014 23:00
@ Alienware-Naomi Hi thanks for the response, but as I said, we can't get into the boot menu.
@Scrappylucie thanks for the tip, we just happened to do this while originally trying to diagnose the problem.
The machine has been delivered to a PC repair place, hopefully they can fix it.