The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    M14x doesn't boot

    Discussion in 'Alienware 14 and M14x' started by /Drakk_, Nov 4, 2011.

  1. /Drakk_

    /Drakk_ Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    2
    Messages:
    281
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    (BIOS A05)

    My m14x has an odd booting issue. It doesn't boot if there's a CD in the optical drive (I am pretty sure this is the issue), instead I get stuck on a black screen with a solid text cursor like an underscore. I have my priority boot device as the hard drive in BIOS but it still does not want to boot unless I press F12 in the startup menu and manually choose hard drive as the boot device. If I do this it boots perfectly.

    Anyone know if it can be fixed?
     
    /Drakk_, Nov 4, 2011
    #1
  2. CGSDR

    CGSDR Alien Master Race

    Reputations:
    285
    Messages:
    1,477
    Likes Received:
    10
    Trophy Points:
    56
    Hmm, that weird because most of the time I have either GTA4 or Dead Rising 2 on the drive and when I boot it it working fine. Try remove the CD and re-boot it again and if it work, try insert the CD again and re-boot to see if it really the CD problem, and if it doesnt, try another CD like a non-program CD such as a Movie or an Audio CD if it able to boot then the problem will be that particular CD that prevent you to boot. But if it still cant then it is your Optical Drive.

    This can be a nuisance because for e.g if you reset your Windows, I'm sure that between the installation of Windows it will require you to have the Windows Disc inside the Drive all the time until setup is complete.
     
    CGSDR, Nov 4, 2011
    #2
  3. /Drakk_

    /Drakk_ Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    2
    Messages:
    281
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Anyone else have a suggestion? Really want to fix this.
     
    /Drakk_, Nov 5, 2011
    #3
  4. FearEffect

    FearEffect Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    1
    Messages:
    54
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    I think this is a BIOS bug.
    My M14x doesn't boot when I have my USB mouse inserted.
     
    FearEffect, Nov 5, 2011
    #4
  5. /Drakk_

    /Drakk_ Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    2
    Messages:
    281
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    That's a problem I don't have thankfully.

    I should mention that I did go into the boot order and chose hard drive as the first choice boot device. Still the bug persists.
     
    /Drakk_, Nov 6, 2011
    #5
  6. nuaron

    nuaron Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    44
    Messages:
    232
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Its possible that your Optical drive is not working properly. Only way to check this is to test it just the way user CGSDR stated. Try booting with different type of CD , DVD to check whether it persists in all of these cases or gets stuck on just few of them.
     
    nuaron, Nov 9, 2011
    #6
  7. alroar

    alroar Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    1
    Messages:
    126
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    forget that. i should read threads first completely.

    what bios version? a05?
     
    alroar, Nov 9, 2011
    #7
  8. GIJoeMyGoodness

    GIJoeMyGoodness Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    29
    Messages:
    95
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Instead of just changing the order in the boot options have you tried disabling everything but the HDD for booting up? You could always add optical again later if you ever need to reformat it. It may solve your problem.

    Otherwise it's possible that it's a corrupted bootloader.
     
    GIJoeMyGoodness, Nov 9, 2011
    #8
  9. Croatoan

    Croatoan Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    6
    Messages:
    187
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    I had this also, but mainly affected me when coming out of hibernation.

    It seemed that the HD was getting "lost". Only seemed to happen when I plugged the mouse in the left high power usb port.

    I had to run the dell diag, to get it to find the SSD again. I put it down to the SSD and mouse causing a bug on resume. I told mine not to go to sleep / hibernate and hasnt happened since.

    Obvioulsy not a fix but as the SSD boots in 15 secs, it wasnt an issue.

    Got a technician here gain today for a second attempt at realligning my keyboard, asked him about it yesterday but could not recreate it on demand :/
     
    Croatoan, Nov 10, 2011
    #9