Laptop won't boot

Marx · November 24th, 2006, 03:06 PM

Friend has a laptop that won't boot. Here's what I've gotten so far,

Quote:

It won't do anything but stay at the black screen when I turn it on and it say something I don't know about Media test failure check cable Exiting pxe rom

O and it says something with realtek and some #s pci fast ethernet controller and them some #s after that above that

Won't boot with XP cd, a live linux cd, anything. Any ideas?

patio · November 24th, 2006, 04:09 PM

Have you entered the BIOS and set the CDRom as the first boot device ? ?

Sounds like corrupted drivers judging by the error messages you're getting.

patio.

SetiShock · November 24th, 2006, 08:12 PM

Sounds like it may be set up to boot from a network drive. The fact it's failing a media test and saying something about the lan device in the same bank of errors. Do what patio says but while you're in there check the "boot to lan first" setting. It should be disabled.

antisocial · November 29th, 2006, 10:38 PM

If it has a floppy drive make sure that no one left a floppy in it.

lhuser · November 30th, 2006, 09:10 AM

Actually, if you leave the floppy in, it will pop something like this:

Please insert correct Boot disk and press any key to restart

Or maybe:

Invalid System Disk
Press any key to continue

I never seen Media Test failure with a floppy. Although, I'd have the trouble saying that the firmware of the HDD is gone bad. I have a Maxtor 6E040L0 that corrupted by the firmware. Was renamed N40P and BIOS saying it contains an error.

Try swapping with another drive if you have one by chance laying around. That's worse case scenario I can see.

Is there any firmware repairer? Yes, but are you willing to spend $400 on that software unless you can have 50 free hard drives? No.