PXE-E61 problem

[fatgaz]

hi all, you guy's have been sooo good at fixing my problems a mate of mine has brought his laptop to me with this problem to see if you guy's could help, on boot up he gets an error message saying pxe-e61:media test failure, check cable, and pxe-m0f: exiting broadcom pxe rom. now i have checked to see if the harddrive is recognised in the bios and it is and i have also put the hard drive into my computer and it runs on mine, and i have cleaned out the contacts as best i can (sata connections) the laptop is an acer aspire 5720 running vista, any help would be most welcome thanks in advance

[ChuckFickens]

Change the boot order in the BIOS so it's not trying to boot from network first.

[fatgaz]

hi chuck, yep done that, boot order is now HDD,CD,USB,NETWORK still comes up with same message !!

[Mobius1]

Are you able to disable the network and USB boot options in the BIOS completely? Usually you can have just a single boot option in the event the other options are conflicting.

I have had similar problems in the past. In the event that a good boot order doesn't seem to fix it, then use an absolute boot order i.e. boot priority is HDD and then all other options are set to disabled.

[ChuckFickens]

Sounds like the hard drive might not be bootable any more, so it's working through the list and finally trying to boot from the network (a pxe boot)

if you are able to attach the drive to another computer then do so, back up all your personal documents etc and then pressing ALT + F10 during boot up should start the recovery process, this should enable you to restore the laptop back to factory settings, you might be able to repair windows from the same place too.

Doing a full factory restore will delete everything from your hard drive, so as I said, backup first.

[fatgaz]

hi chuck sorry for the delay in replying wife wanted to go shopping :-( cannot disable usb and network in bios, also tried the alt + f10 nothing, put the hard drive into my laptop and it boots up, not fully functional due to different drivers needed but still boots up, so i am thinking that there might be something wrong with the motherboard, in my mates laptop

[ChuckFickens]

I'd expect it to blue screen of death at start-up in another computer, but that does at least prove it's booting. have you tried your hard drive in your mates computer to see if that starts booting?

The other things I'd try are the SATA port settings in the BIOS, you might have a option to swap it between AHCI and IDE (sometimes called ATA or legacy) if you do try it on both modes.

The next thing I'd got for is getting hold of a windows disk and seeing if the install will start and if it recognises the hard drive at the partitioning stage of the install (you don't have to go through with the install at this point)

[fatgaz]

hi chuck yep just tried booting my HDD from my laptop still same message and tried altering sata settings in bios, the hard drive is recognised in the bios but when i went to install xp from disc i get to the 3 option part :- enter to install, r for repair, f3 to quit i hit enter and it says setup did not find any hard disc drives installed, i tried this both on the original HDD and the HDD from my laptop both had same message so i think i will phone my mate and say sorry no can do, any last thoughts ??

[ChuckFickens]

"but when i went to install xp"

XP will not generally recognise SATA hard drives unless you either custom build the XP disk with the SATA drivers included, or make sure the SATA mode is set to IDE (or legacy) in the BIOS.

So either set the SATA mode to IDE, or use a later version of windows that does include the SATA drivers already.

[fatgaz]

hi chuck, yep phoned my mate up and he came over with his vista disc, we tried a clean install, start up repair, restore point all to no avail still did not find HDD although it is recognised in the bios, so i think we are going to call it a day and put it down to bad luck :-(

[fatgaz]

hi chuck, just a quick note to say thanks for all your help my mate is going to buy a second hand laptop and try and get as much of his stuff off the old HDD through my computer and put onto that one, once again thanks for your time and comments