No boot-up, cable failure 1

[pintail]

I have a Dell Optiplex GX1, PIII that came with Win 98, upgraded to XP. When it tries to boot, I get the following message: PXE-E61:Media test failure,check cable.
PXE-MOF: Exiting PXE
What cable is it referencing?
Thanks in advance!

 

[edfair]

Reference is to the hard drive cable.

PXE, if I recall, is enabled in the BIOS. You can cripple it.



Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[kjv1611]

Try going here:

http://forum.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=oplex_bios&message.id=5436

Dell support forums, this is the same specific problems. Just on a guess, I would suggest checking your various IDE cables.

Before doing that even, you could try to hit <F8> to bring up the safe mode, etc. options for Windows XP. There is an option to "boot using last known working configuration" or something like that. If that doesn't work, try booting in safe mode -if it boots, could be a driver, if not, maybe you have a bad ide cable. That is a very innexpensive fix if it is an IDE cable.

Stephen
"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life:
no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." John 14:6 KJV

 

[pintail]

Thanks Ed and Stephen. I will try when I get off work tonight as that machine is at home. I appreciate the help, great forum!

 

[satrow]

Could be that your on-board battery has dropped below voltage, lost the Bios settings for your hard disk and is trying to boot over the network adapter.

Andy.

 

[pintail]

Good point Andy, I thought about the battery but when I looked at it, I couldnt figure out how to remove it. It appears to have a black plastic ring with two "ears" that holds the batttery in place. I couldnt figure out how to remove the battery without possibly cracking the holder.

 

[Freestone]

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/PXE.html

Your PC is trying to boot from your NIC (Network Interface Card). Check your boot order in BIOS.

 

[pintail]

I checked (replaced) the cable anc checked the boot sequence as suggested by Freestone. I no longer get the previous error message but now get the following-

PXE-EOO: There is no free memory between 480k and 640k
PXE-MOF: Exiting PXE
I went into BIOS and tried all three settings there, all to no avail. Any suggestions?

 

[satrow]

Disable the network adapter in the Bios? Change the IRQ for it (may change other resources, too)?

Is the Bios detecting your hard disk? Holding the correct time?

Try booting with one stick of Ram/swapping for another?

Andy.

 

[pintail]

I did not disable the NIC in the BIOS, can try that. The HD is recognized in BIOS, clock keeps time, everything seems to be in proper order, keyboard No.lock on, etc. Also have not tried changing RAM around. Will try these things tonight when I get home. Unfortunately, I have to address these issues from my office machine during the day as I can not get online from home to address directly. Thanks for the patience!

 

[satrow]

It may just be that the MBR on the disk is shot, not bootable; the Bios then looks for an alternative device - try booting from the XP CD, go to the Recovery console and running Fixmbr and /or Fixboot? This should effect a repair in this instance.

Andy.

 

[pintail]

Thanks to all that responded! I tried everything suggested without success. I finally broke down and reinstalled XP. All seems to be working great at the moment.

 

[kjv1611]

Well, that usually does work when everything else fails, so long as you don't have hardware problems. It's just a pain sometimes... I've had a mess that I couldn't figure out before, only 2 days after I had reinstalled XP. So, I zapped it again, and reinstalled! [WINK] - If it's broke, and nothin' else will fix it, just reinstall..

Stephen
"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life:
no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." John 14:6 KJV