Cannot Get Laptop To Set Up

[Smowball]

My son has received his laptop from CEX this morning (a refurbished one) but cannot get it set up. He cannot get the screen to move past this message and he’s pulling his hair out! You cannot get thru to CEX by fone and cannot seem to speak to anyone, just fill in a support ticket and hope someone gets back to you.

Intel UNDI
PXE-2.1
Chuild
883)
Copyright (C) 1997-208B Intel Corporation
This Product is covered by one or more of the following patents
US6,570,884, US6,115,776 and US6, 327, 625
Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller Series v2.64 (11/20/15)
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM.
No Boot Device Found. Press any key to reboot the machine

This is the exact message on the screen in white, on a black background.
The laptop is :

Laptops - Windows
1x Dell 5468/13-6006W/4GB RAM/128GB
SSD/14"AW10/C

Can anyone help at all???

[Fitzer]

Are you sure it was supposed to come with an operating system?

[Smowball]

What do u mean? You’re talking to a techno - wally!!

[Smowball]

What would the solution be??

[goodgoalie]

What happened to the spare laptop you had that you wanted to wipe and give to him?

[Smowball]

GG - long story but basically it wasn’t possible to give him that one, thru no fault of my own.

[barry1010]

It seems that Windows is not installed on the laptop. Have a look at the original listing or your receipt to make sure a version of Windows should have been installed

[barry1010]

This explains the first error code https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000706.htm

The second error code means there is no operating system on the boot drive

[Smowball]

Barry, I don’t have the laptop in front of me - what do I get my son to do/check??

[barry1010]

Have you got the receipt? I would contact CEX if the receipt states Windows 10 or 11 is installed.

[Buenchico]

Either the hard drive is duff or Windows isn't properly installed on it. Return the laptop for a refund.

[ToraToraTora]

There is no operating system installed. Does he have a CD-Rom with it? He'll need a bootable media, CD, USB drive etc with the actual operating system on it. It's a bit naff sending it out like that to the general public who'll struggle to get it up and running. I'd send it back for a refund, sounds like a right shower.

[youngmafbog]

Depending on the model Dell (Win) OS can often be downloaded and installed onto the machine.

You will obviously need to get the machine going so create a boot disk from one of your other machines.

One thing to check is look at the BIOS and ensure it sees the disks and it is set to bootable, also check the boot order. You will probably need to do this to force it to read a USB boot drive.

I know its a bit techy but unfortunately without an op system you are down to line commands and the bios.

[youngmafbog]

Note on above.

If you download the original OS from Dell (with licence) it will download whatever was originally there. Just install it and then update as appropriate. It's unlikely to be able to run W11 I suspect but still may need upgrading to the latest W10. Be aware this takes a while, often depending on your bandwidth.

[barry1010]

Any progress?

[Smowball]

Hi everyone. Well, bearing in mind he lives 3 hrs away from me, he took the laptop, complete with box & invoice, to his closest branch of this well known store/online shop. The staff there looked at it and none of them could get it set up/logged on, so they told him they were simply going to refund the purchase price onto card that paid for it(mine). So I’ve then gone online to look at Curry’s website plus a couple of others, and I found him a brand new laptop for same price - it had been reduced in price as was £100 more originally. So I’ve now bought him a brand new one, which is being delivered tomorrow. Lesson learned - don’t buy things like laptops second hand!

[Buenchico]

There's now wrong with buying secondhand laptops from a reputable specialist eBayer. If you'd had told us what he needed it for then, assuming that it was for normal everyday use (rather than, say, for high-end gaming or video editing), I could have almost certainly found him something suitable, from a firm that I have total trust in, for around £130.

[Smowball]

Awwww maybe next time he is. No it wasn’t for gaming - just every day to day stuff, news, FB, emails, etc etc……