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September 3rd, 2017 08:00

Alienware Aurora - R1- Boot issues

I have a several year old Aurora R1.  I recently pulled it out of storage and am trying to get it back up and running.  When it was last shut down and stored it was working fine.  Now that it's out of storage and running again I can't get the OS to boot.  I got it booted once, and logged into windows fine.  Tried doing some Windows Updates but they failed as well.  Went to reboot and now all I get is a black screen after the Alienware splash and post beep.  I have never run the machine on OC, have upgraded the Ram, HDD, and graphics card.  Ram was upgraded to 24GB Corsair Dominator, HDD is a Sandisk Extreme 240gb, and Graphics is a GTX 770 classified.  The other odd thing I noticed is that the RAM as it displays in the bios somehow lost 8gb.  I swapped the sticks around and now it is seeing all 24 again.  I'm trying to decide if it's the RAM or the MB at this point.  I've tried dropping the ram down to a single stick on bank 1 (4gb), with different sticks to ensure I'm not using a bad stick, but still no luck.  Running Bios version A11. 

Also, i've tried swapping the HDD around on different channels and changing the boot sequence to match.  It won't even boot from a thumb drive that is visible in the boot options list.  I must admit that my trouble shooting skills on hardware have gone downhill lately, so i'm turning to you guys for any thoughts.  Oh, the OS is Win 7 64-bit btw. 

10 Elder

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45.2K Posts

September 3rd, 2017 18:00

You might want to re-post this in the Alienware Club forum because that's where the AW experts hang out to see if they have any suggestions:

en.community.dell.com/.../default.aspx

September 3rd, 2017 08:00

oh, and i just tried pulling all the HDD's and booting to see if it would error out, and nothing.  blank screen.  

10 Elder

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45.2K Posts

September 3rd, 2017 13:00

Start by replacing the motherboard battery which may have died. The settings would be reset to the factory defaults if the battery died and they may not be suitable for your specific hardware.

So with a new battery installed, reboot and see if you can get into BIOS setup by immediately pressing F2.  Check the settings and change -if necessary- to suit your hardware. Then reboot and press F12 and run all hardware diagnostics.

And unfortunately, failed Windows updates may have corrupted the hard drive and you may now have to repair or reinstall Windows...

September 3rd, 2017 14:00

Just replaced CMOS battery.  No luck.  After splash screen it hangs.  Passed all the built-in hardware tests last night (PSA).  Not sure what else to try at this point I think it might be that stupid secondary board for the lighting controls.  Also noticing some weird start up behavior, might be the PSU???  Will power on for a few seconds then cycle off and then back on before I get the splash screen.  Fan RPMS are wonky at times as well.  Just not sure if it's because it's 7+ years old or what at this point.

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