[fed_up_with_win]

hey im new to this as well

ok heres the story ....one day stupidily i buy an alienware laptop move back home to ireland and realise i cant buy any replacement parts for it ... so now i have to use an external optical drive via usb

so i tried to install windows vista and im getting that error message as well only i think i may be screwed ... cause i cant boot up any CD or DVD at the min its not picking up my optical drive at all now (it used to but not anymore)

so whats the deal am i done

[djangojazz]

Originally Posted by fed_up_with_win

hey im new to this as well

ok heres the story ....one day stupidily i buy an alienware laptop move back home to ireland and realise i cant buy any replacement parts for it ... so now i have to use an external optical drive via usb

so i tried to install windows vista and im getting that error message as well only i think i may be screwed ... cause i cant boot up any CD or DVD at the min its not picking up my optical drive at all now (it used to but not anymore)

so whats the deal am i done

Before doing anything are your drives properly reading? Can you access your system at all under Windows (boot into windows?). If so I'm still trying to get Vista to work myself but I would imagine Vista would still have the device manager. In XP it's My Computer>Rightclick>properties>Hardware>device manager>shows list of all your hardware currently in your system. Chances are you could have lost a driver so if you can boot up, go to whoever your company is for your optical drive and download a driver.

If you did all this already I would reformat your whole drive and reinstall windows XP. There is tons of things I have heard that Vista is not doing right(and this OS is coming out in January, lol yeah right). If you have already done that and your actual hardware is not lighting up, not working after a reinstall, I would check your jumper setting to see if it was set to say a master and some change didn't like that. I generally set mine to "cable selected", but to be honest I have never tore apart a laptop so I don't even know if the optical drives have jumpers. I would assume so though and generally any optical or harddrive you have whether it be IDE or SATA cable shows right on the actual device how you set the jumpers for what setting. If you are unaware of what jumpers are they are simply a little two prong plug that you put to block certain wires sticking out of the unit. I would recommend buying a guide or going onto Alienware's site and asking around how to dissassemble the case properly. Just google laptop disassembly and Toshibas and Fujitsus come out of nowhere. But.... it is Alienware, don't you get like premium super duper extra special support with one of those?

[fed_up_with_win]

thanx for responding so quickly ...... alas i cannot boot up on win xp at all nada

just that screen and nothing else ......ive tried all the vers of win i have and my recovery cd's changed the boot order and nothing still just gives me that error over and over again

ill call over to a friend and see if i can borrow an optical drive maybe

other than that what can i do

[DoubleHelix]

If an external optical drive is not a supported boot device, then there's nothing more you can do.

I assume you already called Alienware and were told they will not ship any replacement parts to Ireland?

[fed_up_with_win]

Yup they siad cant help me as i have moved to ireland even tought the alienware factory is in sligo in ireland about 2 hours away .....they wount deal with me ....

will a normal optical drive hook up if i take it apart and slot it in ..... i assume the connections for opticals are all the same ??

might try that maybe ?

[DoubleHelix]

Ah, no. The connections are not the same. There's no such thing as a "generic" internal laptop optical drive.

Now, maybe someone like JohnWill will come along and say it's possible to rig one up, but it would involve a lot more than "taking it apart" and "slotting it in".

Have you looked on eBay for a replacement?

[djangojazz]

Originally Posted by fed_up_with_win

thanx for responding so quickly ...... alas i cannot boot up on win xp at all nada

just that screen and nothing else ......ive tried all the vers of win i have and my recovery cd's changed the boot order and nothing still just gives me that error over and over again

ill call over to a friend and see if i can borrow an optical drive maybe

other than that what can i do

Can your optical drive recognize itself on Bios? Click F2 near the start see under IDE or SATA Drives if it even shows up. If it does the system sees it but the OS does not for what ever reason.

You need to reformat your harddrive it seems like your boot manager got screwed up. Now while you may ask others here and they may be able to find the error my idea is: You now have multiple versions on your harddrive, your system seems corrupted, you can't work at all right? It's time to rebuild from the ground up.

1. Do you have a "system restore" on your disk? A lot of companies started partitioning a part of your local to do a complete restore of factory settings when the laptop was sent to you generally you start it when your first screen shows. IE You see Alienware, HP, Dell, show on your screen with the intel or Amd logo showing your chip. You then hit CTRL+F11 or F12 generally. You get a simple screen that will ask you if you want to restore factory settings.

2. Win XP and earlier have a built in disk formatter into their disk to help you reformat your harddisk drive. Simply go into bios, again at the startup Alienware screen hit something like F2 or similar, you get a simple screen showing things like Memory, CPU, and very simple looking menus. You want to find anything that looks similar to "Boot Sequence", you will see generally the system for most systems have an order that is generally boot from harddisk, followed by boot from optical, followed by an unselected boot from floppy; generally speaking. Unselect everything except "boot from Cd". Now save the changes, put in your XP disc.

Now as you go through select, new system config, I think you hit R at a menu that stands for reformat. You know you did write because you will get a very bold or red screen at some point saying something like: "HEY YOU ARE ABOUT TO DELETE ALL YOUR DATA ON YOUR DISK AND ONCE YOU GO FORWARD YOU CAN'T GO BACK. ARE YOU SURE?". Say yeah I'm sure, You'll see a generic screen occur and your disk was just magnetically erased. Now you'll see that active partition is gone, choose new partition, and then basically just follow directions. If this doesn't work merely to get your OS Back I would think your Harddrive is faulty.

[DoubleHelix]

djangojazz, none of that helps if the optical drive is bad.

[djangojazz]

Originally Posted by DoubleHelix

djangojazz, none of that helps if the optical drive is bad.

Yes but by checking from the BIOS you could tell the easiest if the drive was bad or not.

[eliteinferno1]

Try downloading a free iso of gparted and boot off it and boot from 1st partition thats what i did