Member Avatar for 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

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Generated

Quick summary and what's most likely
The PXE messages mean the firmware tried every configured boot device, found nothing bootable, and fell back to network boot. Because you can enter BIOS and the new HDD is now listed, the motherboard/CPU and basic disk controller are probably OK — the failure is likely missing bootable media (bad CD drive, no OS on the new disk, or BIOS not actually seeing your USB device).

Practical, ordered options to recover the laptop (cheapest/fastest first)

  1. Borrow or use a cheap USB optical drive to run the XP/Vista installer. This is the least technical and lowest-risk route if you need to reinstall.
  2. Attach the laptop HDD to a desktop with a USB‑to‑IDE/SATA adapter or place it in an external enclosure. From that desktop you can prepare the disk (partition, format, write MBR) or install Windows directly to that drive, then put it back in the laptop. This avoids needing the laptop’s CD drive or USB‑boot support. Typical disk prep (on a Windows host) is:
diskpart
select disk X
clean
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs quick
active
exit

After a full install or if the laptop won’t boot, run the recovery tools on the target machine to repair the boot sector (XP: fixmbr / fixboot; Vista+ / Win7+: bootrec /FixMbr bootrec /FixBoot bootrec /RebuildBcd).

  1. If you prefer not to remove the drive, try a FAT32 USB stick prepared with WinPE/Hiren: some older BIOSes don’t list “USB” but will auto-detect a removable stick (as @BTCG07 observed). Also check the BIOS “Hard Disk Drive priority” section — USB devices sometimes appear there rather than in the main boot list.

Notes and cautions
Reseat the internal optical drive connectors first — a loose cable can mimic a dead drive. If you install Windows on another PC then move the disk back, expect driver/activation issues; a repair install or running Sysprep before the move will reduce driver problems. PXE is viable (as said) but is the most complex option.

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Member Avatar for 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?

Edited by finito because: n/a
Member Avatar for 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

Member Avatar for 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.

Member Avatar for 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.

Member Avatar for 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

Member Avatar for 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.

Member Avatar for 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://wiki.contribs.org/PXE_booting_to_BARTPE

Member Avatar for 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

Member Avatar for 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.

Member Avatar for 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.

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