Problems with 2006 Alienware Aurora M9700

Question

Hello everyone,I am trying to fix a friends Alienware M9700 gaming laptop. I am trying to restore is back to factory fresh condition. That is the Alienware skinned Win XP Pro MCE. I have both the Respawn DVD and Restore CD sets. They are pretty clean, with very light surface scratches. The system was upgraded to 2GB of ram sometime in the past. There is nothing on the either HD that needs to be saved. It appears that the recovery partition was wiped out with a Linux install, and a failed Vista to Win 8 upgrade that will not recover or boot. I do not want these anyway.Problem:The system will not read anything from the internal DVD drive. It will not boot either of the recovery discs. It seems like it can't find track 0 to start a read from. It sound like it is resetting every few seconds. I have an external USB DVD/BD drive the system appears to start the boot process. It reads the Respawn disk and gives an error. 'TZ environment variable not found, cannot use UTC times! General Failure reading drive P'. With the CD restore disk, it starts to load the XP files then hangs when loading the XP Kernel file. I have tried with the USB data cable plugged in to all available ports with no change. I have swapped the position of the ram modules with no change in behavior. I am doing all this on AC power. I have reset the BIOS to defaults with no change in behavior. I have cleaned the internal dvd drive optical lens and no change in behavior. I have tried to boot both the Respawn and restore CD's in a new modern laptop with a built in dvd drive and they do not boot, with dvd as the first boot device. The system is fairly clean on the inside with just a light coat of dust on the fans. The vents look clear. But I put some compressed air through them anyway when I had the back open.I'm kind of stuck on this. Any suggestions on what I should try next?Thanks

crimsom · Answer

Hi @KLund1 welcome to this free user-to-user Alienware laptop discussion forum.

The Alienware M9700 gaming laptop seemingly predates Alienware acquisition by Dell. Product Support did not find Alienware M9700 laptop. Alienware Aurora m9700 review: Alienware Aurora m9700 - CNET.

There is Dell support for the Alienware Aurora desktop which might provide drivers.

Is the plan to install SATA SSD with operating system preinstalled? Purchase modern SATA SSD from eBay would be the best option. Then allow operating system to install drivers by internet connection.

KLund1 · Answer

Thanks for the quick reply. That is most kind of you to welcome me into this forum.

I will keep the spinning drives for now until I get XP installed. The hard drives are in good working condition. And I do not want to deal with SSD TRIM in XP.

My goal is just to get this back to factory fresh if possible.

The included paper 2006 user manual I have states the Respawn disk loads Norton Ghost. Then follow onscreen instructions to load disk 2. Any idea what version they may used? if my disk is bad, perhaps I can burn a ISO and try that.

Also thanks for letting me know this predates the Dell acquisition. I did not know that.

Here is a pic of the back cover off.

Thanks for any help anyone could offer.

crimsom · Answer

Hi @KLund1 thank you for sharing update.

If HDD is bad, the operating system cannot be installed. Guess that you can open BIOS and enable first look for ISO operating system on DVD (if not already enabled). Then install operating system, it should ask to format HDD (all files will be lost).

KLund1 · Answer

Thanks again for the reply.

The HHD's are good. I have checked them in another system. I have wiped the drives.

The problem is I can't get the recovery or respawn CD's to boot fully. CD-Rom is selected in the BIOS as the first boot device.

The CD's start to boot then give errors as noted in the first post.

Again thanks for the help

Chris vela · Answer

Install a separate windows xp installation from another disk then retry installation of original driver disk it should work I had a similar problem with another old laptop

KLund1 · Answer

Thanks everyone.

I have made some progress with this machine.

I was able to figure out how to get the RAID working. I am able to install from the recovery disks. But they lack all the really cool ALienware programs, themes, wallpapers, etc. Which is what I am after here.

The Respwan disks require two files on a hidden partition P: respawn.dat or respawn.dat.zip and those files are long gone.

The respwan Boot disk I think is norton ghost ver 8.0 with some alienware cover theme. The Respawn disk has two Ghost files. I got a USB bootable copy of Ghost 9.0 that can load older versions. But when I try this I get an error saying the hard drive can't be locked. I think the Respwan boot disk might have some Ghost switches set that get around this. They are probably in the respawn.dat or respawn.dat.zip file.

So I am stuck without these files.

Any suggestions or ideas out there?

mattyb3 · Answer

@KLund1 It's pretty hard to find software for these old machines but you may have luck asking one of the guys on our Discord server. There are some guys there that collect the pre-Dell Alienware desktops and a few of them have the laptops. Not 100% sure someone can help but you never know.

https://discord.gg/U3cZW3eS

KLund1 · Answer

Thanks, I'll try there. But is any else ready has any ideas please reply.

crimsom · Answer

Hi @KLund1 please be aware that Alienware Aurora M9700 laptop is a Clevo-built system - also sold as Sager, etc. Search eBay for parts.

Internet search reveals a few M9700 threads in Alienware General - Read Only - Dell Community, such as Alienware Aurora M9700 graphix cards - Dell Community.

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Problems with 2006 Alienware Aurora M9700

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