Gateway laptop says "no operating system." Bios p

by **boaznb** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 10:46 pm

Hi, I'm totally new to this. I recently sent in a Gateway MX7120 in for repair (external cosmetic repair only - due to a manufacturing defect). I have been eagerly awaiting it since I hate vista and had everything working smoothly on this. But when I popped the harddrive back in and turned it on, I received this message:

Pre-bot eXecution Environment (PXE_ v2.1
(C) Copright 1997-2000 Intel Corp.
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM.
Operating System not found

What does this mean? Is my harddrive toast? I popped it out and in
several times and I always get the same error. The only thing I can
think of is that I used an IDE to USB harddrive cable to get files of
it once while I was waiting for the repair. But it worked no problem.
I tried a second time and it sounded dead. No whirring sound, no
response, nothing. I have used the same cable on my harddrive from my
even older SONY laptop multiple times though and never had a problem.
Any solutions or am I screwed? Some friends recommended it might be a Bios boot order issue. I tried changing the the Harddrive to be first or second but it seems to have no change on the problem. Thank you!

by cp » Thu Nov 22, 2007 8:39 pm

does the machine detect the hdd? make sure the bios has correctly detected the hdd and make sure it is number one in the boot queue.
the pxe thing is the network boot capabilty of the integrated NIC.

by **boaznb** » Fri Nov 23, 2007 4:02 am

How do I know if the computer detects the harddrive? I tried changing the boot order and there was absolutely no change. Based on a recomendation by someone else, I went into the Bios and disabled PXE which he said is really a network thing anyway and I'll never need it. I disabled it, and now all it says is that there is no operating system found. Any other ideas?

by cp » Sun Nov 25, 2007 1:02 am

enter the bios, make it detect the hdd and set it as boot drive before anything else.

by **boaznb** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 2:41 am

Could you please be a little more descriptive as to how I do that? I'm new to this. Thank you.

by cp » Sun Nov 25, 2007 12:27 pm

enter the bios, look for 'standard cmos features' or 'auto-detect hdd'

it look somewhat like this:
http://media.techtarget.com/digitalguid ... lass_2.gif

or this:
http://www.bcot1.com/bios27.jpg

make sure your drive appears somewhere at primary master or primary slave. a simple search should give you a lot of useful hits on this topic.

by **boaznb** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 3:55 pm

Okay here is what I have currently:

Primary Master: [None]
Secondary Master: [HL-DT-ST DVD-RW GWA-4082N-]

When I go down to primary master and hit the enter key, it says:
Type: [Auto]

Multi-Sector Transfers: [Disabled] this is grayed out
LBA Mode Control: [Disabled] this is grayed out
32 Bit I/O [Disabled]
Transfer Mode: [Standard] this is grayed out
Ultra DMA Mode: [Disabled] this is grayed out

Is that what you meant I should look for. So I guess it is already set to auto. Is there anyother way to detect the harddrive?

Though this is not the default boot order, I was advised to have it be:
1. IDE CDROM
2. HDD
3. USB FDC
4. Network
5. USB HDD
6. USB CDROM

Is there anything else I can do to get this working again? Thank you.

by cp » Sun Nov 25, 2007 9:11 pm

yes, this is the place where you should look. and everything is like i already suspected: the hdd is not detected. did you check the drive before installing it? did you install the drive correctly? did you install a hdd at all?

by **boaznb** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 9:28 pm

I put the original harddrive back in. If I slide the harddrive out, and then slide it back in the same way, I don't see why it wouldn't work anymore. It can only fit in one way. If you look back to my first entry, I sent in the laptop for repair so removed the harddrive before I did for security reasons and becuase they said I might not get back the same laptop. As far as I can tell, I got back the same laptop and it should work. Maybe the HDD somehow broke while it was out.

just to clarify, as I mentioned before, the repair was to fix a crack in the hinge that connected the LCD screen to the rest of the laptop. The repair shouldn't have caused this. But I don't even understand what the problem is. Is the laptop the problem in that it doesn't detect the HDD. Or is the HDD now faulty and not working. If the latter, is it fixable???

by cp » Mon Nov 26, 2007 1:14 am

if you switch the laptop on, is the hdd spinning up?

it's unlikely that the hdd died while lying around and waiting for the repaired laptop. but it could have been damaged while removing/inserting.
check the connector at the hdd for any suspicious looking flaws/things.

i hope it doesn't sound rude, but regarding your knowledge about computers extracted from your posts, my advice would be: you should take the laptop and the hdd to a dealer or a service point. they will be able to tell if the problem is the hdd, the laptop or a switch/option in the bios.
helping from a distance is difficult in cases like this and may lead to (further) damage rather than success.

by **boaznb** » Mon Nov 26, 2007 3:34 am

I don't hear any spinning no. Nor do I hear any spinning when I hook it up to another laptop with a IDE to USB cable. It worked the first time I did it to get some files off (when I was waiting for the repair) but hasn't worked since.

You are not being rude, I agree with you. The problem is I'm overseas right now. It happened the day before I left. I called several repair places but they all said it would take a few days especially over the holiday weekend. So I took it with me hoping to get it fixed here. But they don't speak English here and I don't have a car so I've been having trouble trying to find a reputable place nearby. I'm sure I'll find one eventually but was hoping it was a simple fix like the changing the boot order. Oh well, I appreciate all your time. Thank you!

by **jwawa1** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 3:40 am

I find that I have the same problem with my gateway laptop. I also was moving info to a large external HD. It started have problems shortly afterwards. a blue screen said windows was shutting down and a physical dump would happen. Now I have the situation you discribed!
Did you get it resolved?

by **boaznb** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 9:08 am

No, afraid I never did. I went to a PC repair place who set the harddrive was most likely damaged. They said they could try to retrieve the info but it would cost a fortune. So instead I just had them install a new harddrive and reinstall the operating system. It was like getting it back fresh from the factory which kind of sucked.

by **KenH** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 11:32 am

boaznb wrote:No, afraid I never did. I went to a PC repair place who set the harddrive was most likely damaged. They said they could try to retrieve the info but it would cost a fortune. So instead I just had them install a new harddrive and reinstall the operating system. It was like getting it back fresh from the factory which kind of sucked.

I have friends tell me this story a lot, of how repair shops state it would
cost a bunch to retrieve data from corrupt drives...
The thing 've found with such cases, is where one system might not
detect a bad drive, another will, & in such cases, stellar phoenix or other
such data recovery software can be used to retrieve lost data from them...

by **edwin** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 1:30 pm

there's even some freeware stuff you can use for recovery. only in severe cases where the mechanics of the drive have gone you want a specialized company to do data retrieval. In all other cases you might even want to change out the PCB with a working one to get the drive going again and copy the data of it. Been there, done that.