Aurora-R4 No bootable drive issue

[T-Hefner]

Hey guys, I just received my alienware aurora r4, on friday. I love it. My specs are Intel 3930K, 32gb ram, gtx 690, 512gb ssd + 1tb 7200 storage drive. About the 5th or 6th boot up. I got a "no bootable drive found error" before it loaded windows. I could get into the bios, looked alright. Hit the power button, and it booted right back up no error. So I thought maybe it was a fluke. Well, guess again, it happened again this morning, but booted right up on 2nd boot. So it has happened 2 times over maybe 15-20 boots. Any ideas?

I also had the problem with the alienhead staying lit up, like it was in sleep mode, don't know if the problems are related. I fact, one time it shutdown, but not only did the alienhead stay lit up, in its orange sleep mode thing, but a fan was still on. That has only happened once. Any ideas? I appreciate any feedback....

 

[yikes81]

Welcome Welcome!

It is possible that you may have a loose HDD connector.
It is also possible that you may need to upgrade the BIOS ... maybe
You possible may have a corrupt boot file. Rebuild in this case.

But I would start with the first option. Turn off your PC, unplug the HDD cable on both sides, and then reseat the cable.
Reboot.

 

[AeonSoul]

Yeah what yikes said, start by checking if there's a loose HDD connection and start from there.

 

[T-Hefner]

Ok guys, checked out the drive, reseated the drive, although it seemed fine. It hasn't happened since yesterday morning. I noticed when it happened and I went into the bios when it wasn't finding a bootable drive, that the Hard drive was 1st boot priority, but when my computer boots normal uefi is normally 1st.

What is the normal recommended boot sequence?

 

[yikes81]

I think UEFI will always be first. It is supposed to be a replacement for BIOS in the sense of managing drivers.


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[T-Hefner]

Yea, I gotcha, I'm going out on a limb, but I dont remember seeing UEFI in the boot priority list, when it fails to boot. I remember seeing 1st priority, hard drive, on a failed boot. If I go into the bios, on a successful boot UEFI is always #1. Anyone else ever see this? or is that normal on a failed boot?

Thanks
-Tim

 

[yikes81]

Hard to say from my experience. There are a multitude of reasons why pc's fail to boot.

 

[T-Hefner]

Well guys, my problem is fixed. After a lot of testing, and reading forums about similar things happening it came down to the bios A06, and overclocking. Basically, With bios A06, and the cpu overclocked, there is a problem, where eventually the bios/mb doesn't see my micron/crucial ssd main, throwing the no bootable drive error. I finally found someone else having the same problem. When I would go into the bios A06, and load optimized defaults, witch disables the overclocking of the cpu, the no bootable drive error would never come back.

I have currently updated to bios A07, witch has fixed the issue of allowing users to change the multiplier in the bios for overclocking, and fixed the issue with my hard drive. it has been days now with the new bios, and no issues. I am a happy camper. Thanks.


-Tim

 

[yikes81]

Cool, thanks for coming back in detail. It's a good reference.


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[AeonSoul]

Nice, good to know. Thanks for sharing.

 

[PaulaK]

Hi, Tim!

Thanks for writing about this ... I'm a complete newby here, and not a particularly savvy computer person. But I'm having very much this same problem. Ordered my computer towards the end of November, and it was delivered in early December ... but I had to wait a few weeks to order the monitor (Dell's annoying "loyalty advantage" program which imposes a 20-day wait for the discount card to be used on your next purchase ... thereby running out the warranty clock on the system while you wait ... arrgh, tearing my hair out about that now!), so the computer couldn't be turned on for the first time until right after Christmas. Immediately out of the box, I started getting these "can't find hard drive" messages intermittently on startup. I've dealt with Dell/Alienware tech support several times now, and they've run remote system checks (everything claims to be healthy) and also had be disconnect/reconnect cables to the hard drive. Now they're sending out a tech to replace my motherboard. I'm pretty upset about all of this, but hoping there might indeed be a simple fix.

I wouldn't have thought my system was "overclocked" to begin with, but it sounds like this is something worth checking. Can you explain in any greater detail how to "go into the BIOS 06" and load optimized defaults?

Thanks for any help you can provide ... I'm also having the problem with the alienhead and other front-of-chassis system lights pulsing as if the system were in sleep mode whenever I power it down. :-( But less concerned about that then about the "no bootable drive" error that keeps recurring.

Paula

 

[AeonSoul]

Well to go into the BIOS you usually hit the F2 key while the PC is booting up (I got a splash screen with the alien head and a loading bar on my laptop, might be the same for the Aurora I'm assuming). From there, I have no clue how Aurora BIOS looks like, but you can start by checking those options over there and see if you find anything that fits.