Posted: 4/6/2010 11:31:51 AM EDT
|
Here is the deal. My buddy asked for me help. His laptop had one of those rogue "anti virus" programs. He could do shit with his comp so he asked for my help. I tried to get rid of it through safe mode but I could not. Even in plain safe mode the virus would appear. I took out my external HD and plugged his into the case (I bought my case and HD separately). I was able to get into his drive but somehow the HD got knocked off my table. It did hit the ground because the USB cable caught it but after that windows could not recognize the drive. I decide to put my external drive in my buddies comp. I completely reformatted it then I put it in his laptop along with and XP Pro cd. I select CDROM as the 1st boot device and restarted the comp. Now I get some odd error. Over and over it tell me: Realtek PCI fast Ethernet controller v2.12 (010817) PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM What in the hell is that and why is it saying this? I am trying to boot from a known good CD to a known good HDD. Could his memory be infected (I was not done scanning the drive with Systematic and MalewareBytes when it fell). Help because I am lost. |
|
Quoted: Looks like it's not booting off the cdrom and trying to do a pxe network boot. Check bios boot order and make sure optical device is 1st on the list and disable network boot I thought about that but I cant get into the boot menu. When I turn it on I immediately hit delete to get to the menu but that doesn't work. |
|
It's not recognizing the new drive, or possibly a problem with the boot CD, or its just getting hung trying to network boot.
Easy way to tell if the HD is the problem is to disconnect the replacement hard drive and just try to boot from the CD. There's likely a setting somewhere in the BIOS to "enable network boot" separate from the regular boot order list, make sure that's disabled. Some bioses use F2 or another button instead of delete to get into the bios settings. |
|
Quoted:
Quoted:
Looks like it's not booting off the cdrom and trying to do a pxe network boot. Check bios boot order and make sure optical device is 1st on the list and disable network boot I thought about that but I cant get into the boot menu. When I turn it on I immediately hit delete to get to the menu but that doesn't work. It sounds to me like network boot was chosen as primary device mistakenly from the OP. Have you let it run to see if the network boot times out? In the instance of it trying to do a pxe boot it will have an extended timeout due to trying to acquire a dhcp address from the pxe server. Clear cmos to set defaults might be in order.... |
|
Quoted: It's not recognizing the new drive, or possibly a problem with the boot CD, or its just getting hung trying to network boot. Easy way to tell if the HD is the problem is to disconnect the replacement hard drive and just try to boot from the CD. There's likely a setting somewhere in the BIOS to "enable network boot" separate from the regular boot order list, make sure that's disabled. Some bioses use F2 or another button instead of delete to get into the bios settings. F2 was it but the BIOS was set to boot from CD. I took the CD out and made sure it was good but same BS. I rearranged the boot sequence but same shit. |
|
Quoted: Quoted: It's not recognizing the new drive, or possibly a problem with the boot CD, or its just getting hung trying to network boot. Easy way to tell if the HD is the problem is to disconnect the replacement hard drive and just try to boot from the CD. There's likely a setting somewhere in the BIOS to "enable network boot" separate from the regular boot order list, make sure that's disabled. Some bioses use F2 or another button instead of delete to get into the bios settings. F2 was it but the BIOS was set to boot from CD. I took the CD out and made sure it was good but same BS. I rearranged the boot sequence but same shit. My $0.02... Go back into BIOS, select the option to "restore factory defaults", then save changes and exit. When it goes through POST again, hit the F2 button once more and make sure it's set to boot from CD, make sure you save changes before you exit. BIOS default restore often covers a multitude of sins... If that doesn't work, I'd probably get a USB floppy drive and a disk with a DOS image and an updated copy of BIOS. What machine is it? Brand/Type? |
|
Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: It's not recognizing the new drive, or possibly a problem with the boot CD, or its just getting hung trying to network boot. Easy way to tell if the HD is the problem is to disconnect the replacement hard drive and just try to boot from the CD. There's likely a setting somewhere in the BIOS to "enable network boot" separate from the regular boot order list, make sure that's disabled. Some bioses use F2 or another button instead of delete to get into the bios settings. F2 was it but the BIOS was set to boot from CD. I took the CD out and made sure it was good but same BS. I rearranged the boot sequence but same shit. My $0.02... Go back into BIOS, select the option to "restore factory defaults", then save changes and exit. When it goes through POST again, hit the F2 button once more and make sure it's set to boot from CD, make sure you save changes before you exit. BIOS default restore often covers a multitude of sins... If that doesn't work, I'd probably get a USB floppy drive and a disk with a DOS image and an updated copy of BIOS. What machine is it? Brand/Type? I will pull the DVDROM out of my laptop to see if that helps. I suspect that the CDROM may be dead here. Its a Sony VGN-FJ290 made in Feb 2006 that came with a 100GB HDD and 1GH of slow ram. With the new HDD out I tried to boot it again. This time it told me "Operating System not found"- Progress. I loaded the factory defaults and tried again, same shit. I now swear that the CDROM in that comp is not working or else the POS would of read my boot disk and we would of been done by now. Could I boot via USB or is this model too old? (I dont own any more legacy hardware). |