laptop has died

chris69

Hi I have an acer travelmate 240 and i think it is dead. It runs on xp and my problem is it will not work it gets onto a page with details
PXE-E61 media test failure
PXE-MOF exiting pxe rom
Operating system not found

I press f2 and it goes to the set up page and f12 to reboot but nothing happens it just goes back to the same page repeating the problems as above. Yesterday it was just going from xp page to acer page continuously.
It has been freezing alot before this and was taking forever to load and go to the next pages but now nothing.
I have taken the battery and the hard drive to check all looked ok

Just wondering if anyone knows what is wrong or if anything can be done. Its annoying that i have lost all that was on my laptop

Thanks in advance

trcooke

When you press F2 and enter the setup page have a look and find the "boot order". This setting allows you to tell your machine what media it should try and boot from and in what order. For the machine to boot the fastest you should set your hard disk (HDD) to be the first one. It may be trying to boot from some other media such as a floppy disk, CD-ROM or even the Network and failing because it doesn't find an operating system.

chris69

Thanks for your advice i have checked it but it is still making no difference

bigkevgray

Hi Chris, like loaner says your hard drive could be faulty. The PXE rom is a chip on your laptops network card which allows it to boot from a PXE server (a feature used in the business world). Your laptop is trying to PXE boot because it cannot find an OS (aka Windows) on your drive. This is more than likely because the drive is faulty.

If you dont have anything important on the laptop or you have a backup of your files elswhere try re-installing windows using the system recovery disks that should have been supplied with the laptop. NOTE - The system recovery disks will almost certanly wipe everything off the computer before re-installing windows.

If you do have files on it that you need and dont have a backup you would be best to take the laptop to someone who knows what they are doing. If you work for a company with it's own IT department ask one of the IT support staff for help.

If your computer is still under warranty call acer, you should note that acer will not attempt to recover any of your data they will only replace any faulty parts.

If it's out of warranty and you dont know anyone who works in IT you have 2 options get it repaired at a computer shop or buy a new laptop shouldnt cost more than £100 if it's just a faulty hard drive. If the laptop is 3+ years old I would consider buying a new laptop, you can get a decent laptop now for around £300 and can even get them "free" by signing to broadband or mobile contracts, these contract tend to be in the region of £20 per month and you'll be tied in for at least 18 months.


Cheers,

Kevin - www.bewareofwimpey.com

bigkevgray

If you do decide to buy a new laptop there's a thread title "The Great 'Cheapest Decent Laptop' Hunt" that MSE Martin has started

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1993