Problem with Acer Aspire laptop?

Question

When I turn on the laptop I get the following message:

NVIDIA Boot Agent 249 . 0542
Copyright (C) 2001-2005 NVIDIA Corporation
Copyright (C) 1997-2000 Intel Corporation
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-MOF: Exiting NVIDIA Boot Agent

The laptop doesn't start up. This message just continues to come up, fills the screen, and keeps on coming....it's endless. I've looked online for some solutions and am still looking, but I am afraid to try any just incase I damage it even further. I am average with computers, but if you use any technical terms you will need to explain them simply.

How can I fix this? I'm quite sure my warranty has run out and I can't contact the company.

In all the different 'solutions' that apparently worked for other people, I can hardly understand much of what they are saying and I don't understand how to do any of that stuff they have written. I'm not familiar with much of the technical jargon.

Answer 1

Your laptop is trying to "network boot" - Instead of reading your operating system files from the hard disk it's attempting to read them from the wired network port.



There could be a couple of reasons behind this:

- Somehow the order in which boot devices are checked has changed in your computer's BIOS resulting in the hard disk not being checked.

- The hard disk has become corrupt and can no longer be read, so the computer is falling back to trying to network boot.



To check, you can look at the computer's Boot Menu. Doing so may vary depending on what model laptop you have. These directions work with my Acer Aspire One, they might be different for you. When you first turn your laptop on, it'll show the Acer logo, and some text at the bottom of the screen saying "Press go to Setup" and "Press to change boot order". This is before it gets to the NVIDIA Boot Agent. Hit F12 at that point.



That should take you to a Boot Menu showing the available devices to boot from. On my Aspire One the first device listed is "IDE 0", referring to the hard disk. The second is "Network Boot".



If you have "Network Boot" at the top of the list, then that's your problem. You should be able to select the hard drive and hit Enter to try to boot from that device. If the hard drive is listed at the top, then unfortunately your problem is a busted drive, and you'll have to replace the drive and reinstall Windows.



EDIT: The boot order that you added indicates that the hard drive should definitely be booting before the network boot option. The fact that it isn't indicates a hard drive failure, sorry. :-(



If you have a restore CD, it might be worth trying to do a full restore using it. If it doesn't detect the hard drive then you definitely have a failed drive and will need to replace it. If it does, then you might just be looking at a corrupt filesystem instead of faulty hardware.



But at this point, I suspect your only real option will be to take it to a repair centre to confirm the problem and replace drive. Even if you're able to restore a running system, this sort of corruption indicates the drive is on the way out.



Alternatively, replacing a laptop hard drive yourself is a relatively simple procedure if you have some familiarity with computers and a little bit of care.

Answer 2

The guy above me "Peter" is right. Just do what he says. If you don't know how, activate your Yahoo Messenger chat option in your Yahoo Answers profile and use it to contact me. I'm assuming you have another computer that you used to ask this question so we can chat live and I will walk you through the steps one-by-one.



Click on my avatar, then click "IM ching shih" in my profile.

I'll be online for a few hours.



Also, your Acer Aspire has the complete factory restore settings stored on a hidden partition if you need to use it. It sounds like you didn't make a restore CD using the Acer eRecovery program but there is another way to access it.



I can show you how to do it while chatting on Yahoo Messenger but it does not sound necessary in this case. By restoring factory settings, you will lose everything you have stored on your hard drive since the first day you had it, including new programs.



Really, it sounds like your boot order is messed up, like Peter says.



.

Answer 3

Nvidia Boot Agent