M6600 Owners Thread

Temperatures after 15 burning using FurMark:

http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/8852/furmark1.jpg
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/4414/furmark2.jpg

Not too high? Any suggestions?

 

Ok... So I messed up my bootmgr or something. I currently have 3 HDDs and 1 mSATA in my M6600. I had Windows 7 in one of the HDDs and I installed Windows 8 to my mSATA. So it installed the bootmgr stuff into the HDD (dual booting / combining it with Windows 7).

Well, I just deleted my Windows 7 partition, and also deleted the "recovery" partition that the bootmgr was in I believe.

So if you're still with me, now I have 3 "empty" HDDs, and 1 mSATA with Windows 8 on it. The mSATA drive does not have that extra partition that Windows usually creates when installing it though (since it was probably on the HDD). Whenever I turn on my laptop, it is unable to find the OS / boot at all. But the thing is, I can get it to boot into Windows 8 and work perfectly fine if I manually select the "minicard SSD" option when clicking F12 (to select where to boot from).
If I change the boot order (putting the minicard SSD first) in the BIOS, it still won't work. I also tried using the automatic repair thing from the Windows 8 CD but that didn't work either.

What I want is for it to be able to boot without me having to press F12 and select minicard SSD all the time. Thanks for your help guys!

 

You could try using this MS Tool (Boot from with WinPE, Windows 8 DVD > Repair... > Command Prompt)
BCDEdit Command-Line Options
or this Tool with your booted Windows 8
EasyBCD - NeoSmart Technologies non-commercial...

Greetings
Schroedinger

 

Laptop'z
Search for posts @Aaron44126 he's got some info over in M6700 thread about this problem with boot manager when installing Win8. Schroedinger's links to tools are probably required.

 

If you trashed your Windows boot partition...

- Using whichever method you like, create a new partition to use as the boot partition. (100 MB NTFS should be fine for legacy boot, make sure to set it "Active". If you are using UEFI then you will need to create a UEFI system partition which is FAT32 with a special flag.)
- Boot the Windows 8 DVD.
- Go to recovery options and fire up a command prompt.
- Figure out which drive letter is your main system drive, and which drive letter is the boot partition that you created. For the purposes of this example, I'm going to say C: is the Windows drive and D: is the boot drive but you might need to adjust this.
- Use the command bcdboot to reinstall the bootloader, like this:
bcdboot C:\Windows /s D: /v
("C:\Windows" is the path to the Windows installation you want to boot, and "D:" is where to install the boot files.)

If all goes well you should get a message indicating success and now be able to boot your machine....

Info on the bcdboot command, used to reinstall the bootloader on a partition of your choice. (Works on Windows 8 even though the docs just say Windows 7.)

Note: You might be able to just use "bcdboot C:\Windows /v" and have it install the boot files on the same partition as Windows itself, and skip the whole boot partition thing. (Not if using UEFI.)

 

I created the partition and was able to create the boot file from the command prompt straight from the computer without having to use the Windows 8 DVD. But it still does not work properly. I think the actual problem is that the M6600 is refusing to boot straight off the mSATA unless I manually select it (because it boots fine when I press F12 to go to Boot Options --> minicard SSD)

If I turn on the computer and let it do it's thing, it'll say

Intel Boot Agent GE v1.3.81

PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable....
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent
No Boot Device Found....

Right now I have my mSATA (C: Windows) is the "Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition" and the B: Boot Parition is "System, Active, Primary Partition" if that's of any use.

 

Don't know if I can help this situation but until someone with more knowledge can contribute - The boot partition should be labeled "System Reserved" and it should NOT be assigned a drive letter. Did you also reset the boot partition drive to be at the top of the list in the BIOS boot order. This is about all I can help with since I've never done multi-boot or Win8.

Edit add: Next you could try running startup repair.

Addendum: Like sevenforums.com there is now an eightforums.com

 

Because your Windows 8 install is probably brand new anyway, this is the easiest and quickest way to get everything 100% in working condition:
backup all of your files into an external drive, the reinstall windows 8 on the msata ssd, formatting all the HDDs and the msata ssd. After that, you're good to go.

If you ever have a problem activating your license again, just phone Microsoft to activate your key over the phone. (Reuse Windows 8 key on new SSD? - Microsoft Community)

 

If you can boot it from the boot menu then you should be good. Check the boot priority settings in the BIOS and make sure the mSATA drive is selected and at the top of the list. The M6600 will default to one of the drives installed in the main bays --- and this will be RESET if you change the drive configuration at all.

 

If you had just read 1 sentence later....