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3414
17 R3, Re-installing windows vs restoring from backup
I am trying to re-install Windows on my Alienware 17 R3 laptop and it has 1TB mechanical drive (C) and 256GV SSD (D).
I used Windows Media Creation tool and I can boot from that USB stick no problem
But I am unable to boot from an external hard disk created with AlienRespawn. it just gives error that no OS was found.
Tried a 256GB USB stick and AlienRespawn gives a generic error when trying to create factory recovery media on that.
What is the best way to get a recovery media created that would allow me to boot up and have some options to re-install or restore from backup?
jphughan
4 Operator
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14K Posts
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February 4th, 2019 14:00
You do NOT need to turn off Secure Boot in order to boot from external devices, and it's not a good idea to do so unless the system actually tells you that it refused to boot due to an unsigned bootloader and you're certain that's normal for whatever environment you're trying to boot. Having Secure Boot enabled simply means that the system will require that a) you're booting in UEFI mode, and b) the bootloader is signed by a trusted authority. All Microsoft bootloaders from Windows 8 / Windows PE 4 onward are trusted, and even some Linux bootloaders are signed by a trusted authority these days. And many utilities, including Macrium Reflect's Rescue Media, are built on Windows PE, so if you use WinPE 4 or newer, you can even boot those with Secure Boot still enabled. The bottom line is that here in 2019, there are very few situations where you'll actually need to turn it off, basically just things built on WinPE 3.1 or certain Linux distros, or things that for some reason don't support booting in UEFI mode. But since certain ways of turning Secure Boot off on Dell systems also automatically enables Legacy Option ROMs, that again makes it more likely that you'll accidentally boot your install media in Legacy mode -- and if you boot the install media in Legacy mode, it will set up the OS on the hard drive in Legacy mode, which isn't what you want, so the way you boot install media matters.
jphughan
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February 3rd, 2019 14:00
Never having used AlienRespawn before, without looking into what exactly that tool is doing to your external drives, I'm not sure what might be the problem. My guess is that it has something to do with partitioning requirements of Legacy vs. UEFI booting, but obviously that's not really enough to dig into. However, you might want to consider using the Media Creation Tool instead anyway. It's true that you'll "just" get a basic Windows 10 environment that way, but a) some people prefer that instead of getting a bunch of Dell stuff along the way, b) you'll be starting with the latest release of Windows 10, not an older release from the factory image that you'll immediately have to update, and c) you can use Dell Update to quickly get download the drivers you'll need if you start with a basic Windows 10 installation anyway. Worst case if you don't have Ethernet or WiFi out of the box, you might need to download that one driver manually from support.dell.com.
If you really want to use AlienRespawn, hopefully someone who's used that before can jump in to help.
MotorDonkey
61 Posts
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February 3rd, 2019 16:00
Did you trying pressing F12 to get into the boot options?
kneeL242
13 Posts
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February 3rd, 2019 17:00
Yes i use F12 to boot from the USB. Just that when I try booting from the USB hard drive (with the AlienRepawn-created DBR partition) it just boots to it and says no OS found. It might be UEFI , but I turned off SecureBoot and am loading legacy boot rom, but it is still indeed in UEFI mode in the bios.
The media creation tool I used a USB stick and it boots to it just fine.
kneeL242
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February 4th, 2019 08:00
Should I turn SATA Operation to AHCI before installing windows? I thought of maybe buying a 2.5" SSD to replace the 1TB drive with, and installing Windows 10 on it - I just am not sure about the RAID settings and Intel RST etc on the current setup.
Then once I am done installing do I turn Sata Operation back to RAID ?
MotorDonkey
61 Posts
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February 4th, 2019 08:00
You can use wichever mode you want, but you can't easily switch back once you install in that mode. I have used both raid and ahci and find no benefit either way for my use.
jphughan
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February 4th, 2019 09:00
^ Correct, you don't change RAID vs. AHCI after the fact. I wrote a post in this thread (the one marked as the answer) that discusses RAID vs. AHCI in more detail. The short version is that it probably doesn't matter in your case which one you use, although switching to AHCI might spare you needing to provide the Intel RST driver if you perform a clean install. On the other hand, if you're trying to restore a factory image, depending on its state when it was "sealed" prior to image capture, if it was created while the system was in RAID mode then it might not boot if you switch your system to AHCI mode. It depends on whether they captured the factory image while the Windows environment was "generalized" (more flexible for hardware changes, but initial out of box setup takes longer) or "specialized" (already set up for your specific hardware so that even the initial setup starts faster), and I've never looked into this specifically.
But in any case that wouldn't affect your ability to boot from external media. Lastly, having Secure Boot off and Legacy Option ROMs on means that your system will allow booting from both UEFI and Legacy sources. It doesn't completely disable UEFI. But you really shouldn't do that anyway. If your system supports UEFI, then you really want to install the OS in UEFI mode, and enabling Legacy boot support creates the possibility for accidentally installing an OS in Legacy mode rather than UEFI. If that was the problem, then the fix would be to figure out why AlienRespawn media isn't booting in UEFI mode, not forcing your system to accept Legacy mode.
MotorDonkey
61 Posts
1
February 4th, 2019 11:00
Sometimes it's best to just copy your personal data to another drive and do a clean installation. years of patches on patches can wreak havoc on an OS. a fresh start can work miracles.
kneeL242
13 Posts
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February 4th, 2019 11:00
Thank you. I have left it in UEFI mode and I only turned off SecureBoot so that it would allow me to boot from external drives.
I might just need to keep trying some more devices with AlienRespawn. It was an old USB 2.0 1TB external which it seems to successfully created restore media on it, but won't boot from. I do not have anything to really "back up" so I will just blow it away and do fresh Windows install.
I seemingly mis-understood read many posts that seemed to indicate I needed to turn off RAID before re-installing windows 10 fresh on an ALienware laptop thats setup this way., especially if one wants to install win10 on the secondary SSD.
MotorDonkey
61 Posts
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February 4th, 2019 13:00
I forgot about that! Yes Alien Respawn will not work on Windows 10.
Tesla1856
8 Wizard
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February 4th, 2019 13:00
AFAIK, AlienRespawn is not supported on Windows-10.
For Imaging/Backups, I use Macrium Reflect 7 (its free).
kneeL242
13 Posts
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February 7th, 2019 07:00
I appreciate all the information!
Basically AlienRespawn does indeed run in Windows 10, but the boot disk it created was causing all my problems.
once i removed that, other USBs finally show up both with UEFI and secureboot turned on
MotorDonkey
61 Posts
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February 7th, 2019 08:00
Glad to hear you got it worked out!