PXE errors Windows wont boot

[fej180]

My dad's laptop won't boot up anymore. It was working fine for a long time running Windows XP. Now when he boots it up he gets this error message:

"Yukon PXE v3.06 (20041109)
(C) Copyright 2003-2004 Marvell (R). All Rights Reserved

Pre-boot eXecution Environment (PXE) v2.1
(C) Copyright 1997-2000 Intel Corporation.
PXE-E61 : Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F : Exiting PXE ROM.
Operating System not found"

The other day we hooked up a WD USB portable HDD to it, and this might be the first re-boot since then, I am not sure if that would have anything to do with it or not. I checked the boot priorities in the BIOS and set the "main hard drive" to the top of the list, but that didn't work, and tried setting the BIOS to its default configurations. I also tried to boot XP in safe mode, which didn't work. If you guys have any ideas let me know. Thanks

Jeff

 

[patrickv]

Operating system not found is due to many reasons but most cases probably the partition is corrupted, but i may be wrong, try booting from the XP cd and go to repair , yes the first screen , it will bring you to the recovery console from there see if your file system is still there.
Like if C or the windows folder exists, if not, your partition is damage.
did the BIOS detect the hard drive ?

 

[fej180]

yeah the BIOS does see the hard drive. I will try windows recovery disc and post how it goes. Thanks

Jeff

 

[fej180]

Ok, I tried his Windows CD that came with his computer and here is what I got:

"Gateway System Recovery

No operating system installed or partition corrupted.
Press 'R' to perform a full System Recovery.

Note: This option will install a recovery partition first, then restore the user partition."

However, when I press "r" it does nothing. And after pressing it several times it starts to beep when I press it. So I decided I would try my Windows CD out. After going through the Windows setup and and that it asks me if I want to A) continue installing Windows, press enter, B) Repair Windows, press R, C) quit, press F3. So I pressed R and here is what I got:

"Microsoft Windows XP(TM) Recovery Console.

The Recovery Console provides system repair and recovery functionality.

Type EXIT to quit the Recovery Console and restart the computer.

The path or file specified is not valid.
C:\>_"

From here I don't know what to do. It seems to me like a partition is corrupted somehow. I noticed when I was browsing through his computer the other day (plugging in the USB HD) there was the main C: drive, and there was a D: drive called recovery. I don't if that was from system restore, or if thats where Windows was installed or what, but I think either C: or D: or both have to be corrupted. So, is there any way to fix them? If not, is there any way to save the data from the HD and then re-install Windows all together? thanks

Jeff

 

[tlarkin]

PXE is pre-execution environment and what it is basically is netboot. Your laptop can't find any bootable material and it is just going down all the devices and the NIC is probably set to boot last, so it fails on that because obviously you don't have a netboot server running.

Boot off your XP CD and run the following code, do this at your own risk because there is always a chance of losing data but if you drive is screwed anyways its not like you have much of chance of saving the data with out going to a specialist. So, this is totally worth a shot

boot off the CD and go into recovery console and type the following commands after you log in as admin and choose the installation to modify. Hit enter after each line

attrib -r c:\boot.ini

attrib -s c:\boot.ini

attrib -h c:\boot.ini

We basically modified the boot.ini file to no longer be read only, hidden, and owned by the system

del c:\boot.ini

deletes the boo.ini

bootcfg /rebuild

This scans through dll files and other needed files to make a system boot, if there is any corruption in the boot strap it will be repaired if possible. It will ask you if you want to add any options, and yes you do. Type in /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

chdsk /r

This will rebuild any file system issue

fixboot

rewrites the boot sector, now you can type exit and reboot the sytsem

good luck

 

[lisalin08]

same problem here

i have the same problem. Yukon PXE v.3.06 cannot PXE and cannot find the media file. i tried to reinstall the installation cd, it's saying something about "hard drive cannot be found, press any key to exit."
anyone ahs any idea how to figure it out, i would really appreciate it. Thanks