Chizl

I made the biggest mistake of my life and about a year and a half ago, I purchased an Alienware box.. It's was state of the art at the time "supposable", but at a serious price.. Specs on it: http://www.chizl.com/comp/. From day one, nothing but problems. Found out it was over clocked and was getting over clocking errors at least 3 times a week. I called Alienware and over the year of support I must have talked to them about this same problem at lease 15 to 20 times.. I never got a real solution and after the year ended, they refused to support me without a $400+ cost and $75 an hour for labor.

I tried burning the box and ever since, I don't have that machine working anymore.. I'm not sure what the problem is, but when I drop the CD in for Windows XP, I get to the windows install blue screen saying "Windows Setup", but it never does anything after that.. It's like all of a sudden it can't find the array.. I went in and killed the array and recreated it. Still same thing. So then I unplugged the array and plugged in a 2GB harddrive I had lying around, figuring maybe I have an array problem all together. I can't get this hard drive to even show up as plugged into the mother board. Ive triple checked the jumpers and it's setup as master, it's the only drive plugged into the mother board, and it still tells me, no Hard Drive found.

I'm not sure what to do from this point, but thought about just going out, buying another motherboard, CPU, case and Hard drives, pull out all my cool stuff from this box and moving it over. Unless someone here can tell me a better way to fix my problem.

I haven't built a computer since 1995 and things have change a lot since then. I remember when IRQ's was the only issues people really had to worry about.

Any direction would be greatly appreciated.

Chizl:

jimscreechy

It' is quite likely that this is just a setting in the bios that needs to be changed. (have you attempted to acess the bios and see how the RAID config is setup?)

What type of mother board is this anyway. A little more information will go a long way to advising you here.


YOu set the Box on fire!!!
'Lord! Please forgive him, it was done in a moment of madness!'

Chizl

Thanks for the reply.. It was in the link above (http://www.chizl.com/comp/), I just didn't want to fill up the page with the exact same info.

Processor: AMD Athlon™ 64 FX-53 Processor with HyperTransport Technology
Motherboard: ASUS® A8V Deluxe - VIA K8T800 Pro Motherboard

Yes, I've been into the Bios (AMIBIOS FastTrack 378). I don't see anything about a Raid under that.. This is a hardware raid coming right off the mother board. There is a raid configuration after the bios startup and I've going into it, but there's no disable, only create, delete, select boot array, and view.. I've deleted the array and it still looks for one so that's not working, I've recreated the array with the array drives in it, still doesn't work. This configuration can find the drives, its as if Windows install can not.

After deleting an array is there something like fdisk for arrays to create partitions or format? I was assuming Windows would do that for me, which it had in the past with NT 4. Maybe that's my whole mistake.. I'm not sure..

I'm about to throw this $4k box in the trashcan, I'm so ticked off about it.

Is it possibly a jumper setting?

Chizl

I think from now on, I'm going to stick with non-array, pentium, custom built machines. I've always heard the rave on how great alienware is, so I finally decided to buy one. Out of the 8 or so boxes I've ever purchased, this was the most expensive and had the most problems from day one.

mgoldb2

1. First create a new array in raid option screen. Set it up as raid 0 or raid 1 depending on what you want.

RAID 0 - faster but if one harddrive fail you loose the data from both harddrive.

RAID1- only get the space of one harddrive but if one harddrive fail you can use the other harddrive with no data lost.

2. during windows installation at the buttom of the screen near the very begining it should say something like hit f8 to install drivers. You will need to do this. Then when the install driver screen comes up a little bit later you must install the drivers for your raid controller. after that you should be able to install windows.

Also since you was having problems besides that I would un-overclock it.

Not sure the layout of the bios but try to find mutiplier and FSB. set the mutiplier to 12 and the FSB to 200.

Chizl

yea, that's the thing.. It never does.. Never says anything outside of Windows Setup at the top.. I've install Windows around 400 times.. I know it like the back of my hand and it seems to be freezing as it starts.. I have four different XP CD's including a 64 bit version that all do the same thing at that point in time..

mgoldb2

try the un-overcloking thing I mention. I just added it to my last post proberly as you was posting.

Chizl

I just booted the machine and got a CPU Over Temperture Error.. Didn't change a thing.. This box is on crack.. I'll try it, one sec..

Chizl

I tried rebooting and my box started beeping like crazy.. I touched my CPU and it's on fire..

Chizl

CPU is too hot, I guess.. My machine will not boot without beeping like crazy at me.. I've put a small box fan on the CPU and unplugged the box .. let it set for a few min then I'll try what you said..

Chizl

What does it mean when the CPU is hot as fire, actually burned me, and the power supply is ice cold?

mgoldb2

It mean your cpu is proberly overheating. could be because it overcloked and need to be un-ovclocked.

I have anouther quick question thoe. How did you touch the cpu? there should be some type of cooling over it like a big heatsink and fan.

Chizl

The only thing I can find is under "Advanced" | "System Frequency/Voltage Configuration" there is an AI Overclocking. It's set to standard with the options to change it to.... "Auto", "Manual", "Standard", "Overclock 3%"
, "Overclock 5%", "Overclock 7%", "Overclock 10%", or "Adaptive Overclocking". When I take it to manual, I see the FSB Frequency is set to 200 MHz, but there's nothing about a multiplier. There are options for
DDR Voltage with settings of "Auto" but can be set to 2.6V, 2.7V, or 2.8V.
Also
AGP Voltage with a setting of "1.5V" but can be set to 1.6V
Also
V-Link Voltage with a setting of "2.5V" , but can be set to 2.6V.

That it..

Chizl

I reached over the heat sink and fan.. I touched the side, then again it I can't see the side, so it may of been the side of the heat sink..

Chizl

I never knew this comp was over clocked until I got the first error.. I never over clock my machines.. Actually hate it.. I talked to Alienware while the box had this error.. They told me to press F2 to Default and it would set it to not be over clocked.. I think that was a lie, because I still get the error over and over.. There support was great with answering the phone and keeping me running in circles, but they never resolved anything.

mgoldb2

let reset everything to factory defaults just in case that helps.

There should be a jumper setting to reset CMOS. I looked up your motherboard and to the right of pci slot 4 there should be a 3 pin thing that have a jumper over pin 1 and 2. change it to pin 2 and 3. leave it like that for about 30 secounds then change it back to pin 1 and 2.

After that if your bios says the cpu temperture please tell me what that temperture is. not sure if the bios will show temp or not.

If it not overheating I will tell you some bios changes you will need to make but first let try to get this thing to boot with out overheating error.

mgoldb2

just looked up Power menu, hardware monitor will show the temps so do tell me the temps after reseting cmos.

Chizl

so do I start the machine up and let it set for 30 seconds? Or just let it set for 30 seconds with it off? Sorry, not sure these days..

Chizl

nevermind.. The machine will not even boot with the jumper that way

Chizl

ok, I changed it back.. I get a CMOS Checksum Bad.. CMOS Date/Time Not Set.. F1 to run Setup, F2 to load defaults..