Computer help, please!!

[audiobliss]

Dad's having problems with his laptop, and he relies on it daily for business.

He setup his laptop at home on the desk (plugged into power and phone line), got online, then turned aside to something else. When he looked back at the computer a error message had pupped up saying something to the effect of 'An error has occurred and Windows is shutting down'.

After a few seconds Dad just pushed the power button and turned it off. After rebooting the computer, he got the following screen:

PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0f: Exiting Intel Boot Agent
Operating System Not Found

I called a programmer friend, and at his prompting we played around a little bit in the BIOS to no avail. Then, he suggested I remove and reseat the HD, which I did - also to no avail. He then suggested either plugging the HD into another laptop and/or using/making a bootable CD.

Well, my laptop's HD is sealed off and unaccessible, so the first option's out. None of us have a bootable CD (for Windows XP Pro), so that option's not working at the moment.

The biggest issue here is time, as he NEEDS a laptop for business. That need is appeased at the moment as I loaned out my laptop, but that's temporary, lol.

It's a Gateway computer, 40GB Toshiba HD, Samsung CDRW/DVD drive, Windows XP Pro.

ANY advice would be GREATLY appreciated!!!

[Refefer]

You don't need to have the HDD plugged it into another laptop to test to see if it failed. You can go down to a local computer store and buy an external enclosure for the harddrive (make sure to get the 2.5 ones), install it in the enclosure, and then plug it in via firewire or USB and check to see if the hard drive is working properly.

It sounds pretty bad from my end... hope he backed up his data. Judging by the specs, the laptop is probably at least 3 years old, and right on time for the hard drive to being failing.

[disneyjoe7]

I agree with your friend you need to pull the drive or boot it up some how... You have a dead HD or a bad mother board, so you need to know which.

BTW doesn't sound good.

[audiobliss]

Thanks for the input, fellas.

That's a good idea about buying an enclosure for the drive. Are they inexpensive? And I'm assuming the laptop woudl still recognize something connected to the USB port and would even boot off it if the HD is still good?

I would say the laptop is about 2 years old, but I'm not certain. It's got a 1400Mhz Pentium M.


Is it possible that the connection is what's bad and that the HD and the MB are still fine? I know that's being optimistic, but isnt' that still a possibility?

[Refefer]

The enclosure shouldn't be that expensive, some where in the vicinity of $50 or so. As for booting off of it, you should be able to, but it might be better spent plugging it into another computer that's already running windows and trying to access the files on the harddrive from there. That'll tell you straight up if you have a harddrive problem or something else.

Sure it's always possible that there was a cable problem of some sort, but as he wasn't moving around and it booted up fine, I have my suspicions. DJ7 is probably right that if it isn't the harddrive, it's most likely that the southbridge on the motherboard failing.

[audiobliss]

Good call on hooking it up to a working computer. I actually thought of that solution, then forgot again before I typed up my response.

If it's the HD, would it be a good move to buy another HD and replace it and keep the laptop in commission?

If it's the MB, it's trash, right?

[disneyjoe7]

I'm trying to be optimistic but my gut says the hard drive was wiped by a virus.

[audiobliss]

I wouldn't think that very likely, as this was strictly a business computer that probably saw less than 3 hours of internet access a week, but I guess it'd still be completely possible. IIRC, he was running AVG on it.

[Refefer]

Good call on hooking it up to a working computer. I actually thought of that solution, then forgot again before I typed up my response.

If it's the HD, would it be a good move to buy another HD and replace it and keep the laptop in commission?

If it's the MB, it's trash, right?

If it was my laptop, and I found it was the harddrive, I'd probably buy an inexpensive harddrive, install it. If I was satisfied by my laptop, I'd leave it at that. If I wasn't, I'd sell it on craigslist/ebay and buy a new one, using the sale to offset the cost of a new computer. Laptops are getting much cheaper these days, and his computer is pretty slow... but if you're only doing word processing, who cares?

If it was the mainboard, call up HP and ask them how much it would cost to fix it; it could be your father got a warranty on it and could have it done for free. It might be very expensive otherwise, to the point where buying a new machine would be the better choice.

[Refefer]

I'm trying to be optimistic but my gut says the hard drive was wiped by a virus.

The error message is very Sasser virus-like.

If your father only got online about 3 hours a week, it's unlikely he got any/all the security patches Microsoft has released to combat some of these nasties. If you get the harddrive enclosure, you'll be able to check to see if it was corrupted, or whether there was a hardware problem. Maybe your lucky and only need to reinstall windows.

Edit - If that's the case, shoot me a PM; I have a couple Windows XP Pro installation discs lying around here I can send if you need one.

[audiobliss]

Well, I'm not 100% sure what we just did, but baggedlancer walked me through a few steps through AIM.

He sent me a file to burn to a CD so I could boot from the CD drive. Well, I did that, selected CD drive, and got the SAME message. Then I put it on my thumb drive and selected to boot from removable device, and got the SAME message.

That pretty well says it's the MOBO, no?

[Refefer]

Depends, did you adjust the bios to make sure they were booting from those devices *before* it attempted to boot from the harddrive?

[audiobliss]

Haha, yes. I'm sure someone's done that and I know you have to cover your bases, but that was funny.

Yes, yes. I hit F10 at the startup screen before boot-up and selected the appropriate device.

[Refefer]

Haha, yes. I'm sure someone's done that and I know you have to cover your bases, but that was funny.

Yes, yes. I hit F10 at the startup screen before boot-up and selected the appropriate device.

That someone was me :D

You might want to check out this thread: http://www.nocrash.com/ncbbs/msgs/3247.shtml

They seem to go into great detail on it and might lead you to freedom.

[audiobliss]

Hahahaha. Umm, oops. :o

Thanks for the link. I'll check it out tomorrow. I'm dog tired, now, so I'm hitting the sack.

Thanks for all the input, though!

[fatchowmein]

I have an external enclosure for testing bad drives or to scan virus infected drives. Just make sure you purchase a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter like this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812119020 if you're going to use a regular external drive enclosure meant for 3.5" IDE drives.

Here's a trick that's worked for me maybe 1 out of 50 times. Place the laptop on its side, carefully, with the screen open for balance. Turn on the laptop. Sometimes, the different orientation will get the platters spinning. Requires alot of luck.

Good luck