Vista's got issues, and it's sooo glitchy.

June 2, 2008 6:41 PM

So my wife reboots our Vista computer, and now instead of loading the OS, after a long wait, I get this message: PXE-E61: Media Test Failure Check Cable PXE: MOF Exiting Boradcom PXE ROM 1962 No operating system found. Press F1 to repeat bot sequence. Oh no.

This computer is about a year or so old. It is a Lenovo 3000 J series and has not given me any other problems or indications that the HDD was going bad.

posted by 4ster to computers & internet (9 comments total)

er, boot sequence.
posted by 4ster at 6:44 PM on June 2, 2008

Sounds like the computer isnt recognizing the hard drive, so its skipping it and trying to boot from the network card (PXE "pixie" is part of the bootable network components). I suppose its also possible (somehow) the BIOS settings got changed to try booting from the network card BEFORE the hard drive..

Only thing to do is find a way into BIOS (F1 or some key during the boot sequence) and look to see if the BIOS is detecting the hard drive.
posted by jmnugent at 6:47 PM on June 2, 2008

Most modern systems, on failing to find any sort of physical boot device will try booting off the network. If it has any sort of Intel or Broadcom 100Mbps/1000Mbps LAN card it's trying to find a LAN boot server.

Dead hard drive, no power to hard drive, bad cable, corrupted MBR but the hard drive is physically OK, all sorts of possibilities.
posted by thewalrus at 6:59 PM on June 2, 2008

Something I forgot to mention earlier is that I was having problems where I would reboot and then the "ThinkCentre" screen would come up and half the screen would be all screwed up an illegible. The computer would just freeze there with no hard disk activity, so there was no way to get into the BIOS.

However, it was intermittent, and I was just now able to get into the BIOS and change the boot order so that the optical drive is first and then the hard drive is second (hard drive had been way down in the sequence).

Everything works fine now, but does anyone have any idea how I can keep this from happening again?
posted by 4ster at 7:08 PM on June 2, 2008

No I don't know how you keep this from happening again but from your description you're not having problems with Vista. You're having problems with your disk drive. Backup, backup, backup and then have the problem with your hard drive diagnosed and fixed.
posted by rdr at 7:14 PM on June 2, 2008 [1 favorite]

Not that I don't agree with rdr's sentiment to back up... but my interpretation of your problem is that it could be a hard drive issue or a BIOS / motherboard issue...

The fact that your hard drive dropped down the list could be a symptom of a hard drive problem -- if your motherboard's BIOS is set up to deprioritize it because it failed... but that seems like a rather odd "choice".. so I'm not too sure that's really your problem.

I'd be more concerned that the BIOS setting got changed in the first place... which is more likely to be a motherboard problem than anything else... I'd call tech support and see if they can help... unfortunately you'll have to explain something to the first person you talk to that's likely to be way over his/her level-1 support "I only know what's on this script" head.. hopefully you can get someone more knowledgeable to help... You might need a replacement motherboard.
posted by twiggy at 7:22 PM on June 2, 2008

Next time it happens, see if you can boot from the CD drive. This could be a flaky controller (IDE or SATA, whichever). Can't second the back up enough, I lose so much crap from laziness.
posted by IronLizard at 8:32 PM on June 2, 2008

You might want to check that it isn't a problem with Vista SP1 installing. I've heard of boot issues after auto updating to SP1 that are only recently appearing the last few days after people have installed updates.

It requires manual copying over of system files, so maybe it's best to try other options first.
posted by djpyk at 8:57 PM on June 2, 2008

If your BIOS is forgetting system settings such as boot order while powered down, it's possible that the CMOS battery on your motherboard is running low on juice. It's easy & cheap to change, so if you find that the problem doesn't go away it may be worth swapping out for a new one.
posted by whoojemaflip at 5:54 AM on June 4, 2008