Alienware M15 laptop no OS no disk drive

[gellegbs]

I recently replaced the hard drive and upgraded RAM for my son's Alienware M15. Unfortunately his laptop did not come with a cd drive of any kind so I can only use the provided usb drives. I made a Linux Mint boot usb and mounted it using unebuntin. My only options was to go to F2 (settings) or f12 (boot). I tried to change the setting in the boot menu>boot but my only option is network. Then when I go to F2 settings the hard drive is not recognized, so that may be another issue. I read up about it and tried to reinstall the bios on another usb but I am way in over my head there and need to do more research and may possibly be barking up the wrong tree. Any tips?

[usbtux]

Have a look to see if there is a fast boot option in the bios, if there is turn it off.

Have you tried to change the boot order to the USB drive.

Presumably you made the usb on another machine, make sure the usb boots on that other machine.

[gnuuser]

go into the bios and see if the system is actually detecting the drive.
it sounds like it might not be
it may have to be initialized and partitioned
if bios sees it you can use an external cd drive and hirens boot cd to initialize and partition the drive.
if bios does not see the drive it may actually be faulty or not connected securely

[gellegbs]

Have you tried to change the boot order to the USB drive.
Presumably you made the usb on another machine, make sure the usb boots on that other machine.

Thank you for your reply. Yes I tried to change the boot to usb but only network exists. Yes I made the usb on another computer.

go into the bios and see if the system is actually detecting the drive.
it sounds like it might not be
it may have to be initialized and partitioned
if bios sees it you can use an external cd drive and hirens boot cd to initialize and partition the drive.
if bios does not see the drive it may actually be faulty or not connected securely

I will look into that, i have a feeling you are correct about the drive not being detected. I also need to check and make sure my new hard drive isn't a lemon. I don't know why dell has bad ones (2nd Dell computer this year to die from faulty hard drive)Thank you very much for your input I will try all these.

[gnuuser]

your welcome Ive been a tech now for nearly 35 years you'd be surprised with some things ive encountered
just for kicks i used to mess with geek squad reps quite a bit