Laptop wont boot from hard drive or disk

[jaso24]

I have a friend's Toshiba Tecra M2. When it tries to boot it shows the errors:

IDE #0 Error
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent.
Insert system disk in drive.
Press any key when ready....

The hard drive wasn't recognized in the BIOS, so I replaced it with a new drive. The new drive is recognized in the BIOS and the IDE error went away. I tried booting from the CD drive using an XP disk and a Vista disk, but I keep getting the PXE errors. I have tried many different setting in the BIOS including the boot order. Any idea what the problem could be? If the motherboard was bad would I be able to get to BIOS? Is it most likely a bad CD drive or connection?

Thanks

[finito]

PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent.

Error is for Network boot, your machine seems to be skipping boot to HD.

What you want to do is Set CD to boot first.

If you are doing that then maybe your XP disk is not bootable or the CD rom drive is not working.

Can you check the CD in another computer?

[jaso24]

I have it set to boot to CD. The XP disk works on another computer. Are there any other possible reasons for the problem other than the CD drive? The hard drive needed to be replaced, so is it likely that something else failed at the same time?

Thanks

[finito]

It is possible, I don't know the exact situation and reason you changed the hard drive, so I can't say anything for certain.

Why don't you make a Bootable USB drive.

Who uses CD's anyway? I mean they are still there but the amount of times I use my drive has dropped to almost nill.

[jaso24]

I was going to use an external drive to boot from, but there is no option in the BIOS to boot from USB. The only options are HDD, FDD, CD-ROM and LAN.

I replaced the HDD because of the IDE #0 error and BIOS listed "NONE" for the built-in HDD. The error is now gone and BIOS recognizes the new HDD.

[jaso24]

I found out that the CD drive is bad. So I cant boot from the hard drive, there is no floppy, and the CD drive is bad. That leaves me with LAN if dont want to pay $80 for a replacement CD drive. Does anybody know how to boot from LAN? Or know some way to make it boot from USB when there is no USB option in the BIOS?

Thank You

[BTCG07]

You will have to set up Remote Installation Service on another computer, I would recommend replacing the drive though. Another possibility is: My Alienware never listed USB in the Bios boot order but when I left a FAT32 formatted knoppix key in, it booted to that. So you computer may auto detect plug/play devices. Final sugestion is a $20 USB optical drive, should be bootable, have used this method on my friends computer.

[rch1231]

Hello,

You can pick up a USB external housing for aroung $40 and put a CDROM in it then boot from the USB-CDROM. For network boot you have to set up a system with a tftp server, dhcp server, and pxelinux (part of syslinux) or look into Microsoft RIS. I set up the PXE boot server running Linux for my company and have at home and it is not something you set up the first time in a couple of hours. But here are a few links that helped me get the process started and understand what had to be done.

http://www.shirwablog.com/pxe-server/howto-install-centos-pxe-server
http://wiki.contribs.org/PXE_booting_to_BARTPE

[bozemeier]

I got a Toshiba Satellite A15-S1292 ay a yard sale and immediately upon booting I received this message:

IDE #0 ERROR

Intel(R) Boot Agent FE v4.1.09
Copyright (C) 1997-2002, Intel Corporation
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-MOF: Exiting Intel Boot Agent.
Insert system disk in drive.
Press any key when ready....

Here is where it gets weird. I started investigating (since I only spent $20 on it) and at one point pulled out the hard drive. Since I know nothing about laptops I just put it back in nice and tight and went on looking around. There was nothing that looked out of place so I put all the covers back on and tried one last time to boot the laptop. Hotdog! It worked. I loaded Windows XP SP2 and was in business. I installed my favorite programs and even got it on my network. But the error message soon came back so I pulled out the hard drive and put it back in except this time the trick didn't work. I can't get past

IDE #0 ERROR

Intel(R) Boot Agent FE v4.1.09
Copyright (C) 1997-2002, Intel Corporation
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-MOF: Exiting Intel Boot Agent.
Insert system disk in drive.
Press any key when ready....

and I can't get into Safe Mode by hitting F8!

Help please.

Thank you,

Jon

[bizlinkx]

I have a Toshiba Satelite Laptop. I recently Replaced the DC JACK SOCKET and when I tried to boot up I received the following error message. Media Test failure insert boot dick and press any key.

I've removed the disk drive before but I've never had a problem with it in the past. I don't have a boot disk that came with the laptop, so I'm wondering what I should do to get this computer back up and running.

My question is do I need a disk to get it back up and running and is it possible for me to download the software online. It ws runnig on windows vista.

[Abdulwahab786]

Check the BIOS to be sure the hard drive is not set to some kind of wonky settings. Occasionally it can change to ATAPI which is only for optical drives.

Though, that would usually cause a problem when you are trying to copy files in the first place.

Another idea would be to scan the hard drive for bad sectors, just because it works does not mean that data (Such as the master boot record) is not being copied to a corrupted portion of the disk. I know it is a new drive, but that does not mean you don't need to make sure.

Other than that, it has to be maybe a controller issue, which is not fixable.

Either way, you need to test the drive in another computer to make sure other computers can boot off the drive.