Help needed - Tried replacing Hard Drive - laptop completely crashed

randomguy

Any help would be really appreciated. (I started a thread about replacing my Hard Drive - I have tried to do it but it has all gone pear-shaped- the other thread has become a debate about something else, and I really need help!!)

I cloned my Thinkpad Hard Drive using Acronis. Tried to use the new one, and it wasn't booting - just goes to blank screen. Tried to use old one, but when I turn on computer I am getting the following.
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0f: Exiting Intel PXE ROM.
Boot Failure

The first time this happened, I played around with the Bios and the IBM restore and managed to get the old one working again, and through a USB enclosure was able to look at the new one and see that everything from the old HD was on it. But just in case, I reformatted the new one, cloned again, and tried again. OS (windows xp) won't boot. Put the old one back in, and it won't boot OS either - I am getting the message above.

I tried F10 on starting, which gives the list of possible boot devices. It gives 3, but the hard drive is not one of them. It is like it isn't really reading the Hard Drive, (or the Windows in the hard Drive anyway) and I am at my wits end. I keep getting that message above. I am able to get into Bios when restarting, and can reset it to default, and can change the order of possible boot devices to make sure hard drive is at top, but neither of these possible solutions is working.

I am now writing this on my eeepc and am very worried.

Have I just destroyed both the new and the old hard drives and everything that is on them? Could there be any other reason it won't boot? Anybody have any ideas?

ethernet

The 'check cable' error is resulting from trying to boot through the network. This is probably happening because no hard drive is found so your BIOS is moving down through the list of boot items, such as hard drive, CD/DVD, network.

Was your old drive failing? If so, that would explain why it's not booting when you went to put it back in.

What option are you using in Acronis? The clone from drive A to B or are you restoring a complete image of your drive to the new drive?

Ginger

OK Pxe boot needs to be disabled in the BIOS (have a look at this thread)

After that, if its not recognising the boot device, get your windows XP disk and do a repair install to make sure that the MBR is correct.. Possibly doing a fixmbr might do it too..

randomguy

Thanks to both of you. Still not fixed. But better.

I cloned with Acronis. Nothing wrong with the old hard drive, just too small.

Have now managed to reboot with the old one in. Wouldn't work. Took it out and put it back in. Wouldn't work. I was also getting the blue screen for a while, and a disk read error, at various times as well as the media test failure. then took it out and put it back in again, and worked, even though i hadn't done anyhting differently. Bizarre. Have reset Bios, removed Lan from network and boot options in startup.

I don't have a disk for my windows xp. Is it possible to make a boot disk or something??? I have the serial code/key thing on the sticker on the computer.

Am tempted to take it out, put in the cloned one, and try again with the new Bios set-up, but am worried that it won't work and when i try on new one again that won't work either, and i'll be back to spending hours starting and restarting and messing in BIOS and in Rescue and Recovery.

What is MBR?

Ginger

The MBR is the master boot record which is the first section on the hard disk that tells the bios what partitions etc are on the disk..

It might not be marked as bootable hence why nothing is happening. You can fix it using fixmbr or mbrfix .. PLease note that using either is at your risk..

Pop it in the laptop, go into the bios and see if its been detected at the right size etc.

Its possible to make a Windows XP bootdisk from your existing XP install (example)

randomguy

Ok, so made a windows xp bootdisk (CD) and I tried to restart with the new drive. No luck. Kept getting message that "no Operating System was detected" (at least I was not getting the old freaky media test failure message.

And now having fixed the Bios it is restarting without a problem when i put the old hard drive back in.

I booted up the old, attached the new via the USB enclosure and it reads it no problem like an external hard drive. So I am running an error check - i have had it in and out of the hard drive slot so many times, I just want to make sure it is ok.

I don't really understand the mbfix stuff - i read a bit online, and although I was able to figure a lot of the stuff about Bios out by messing around, this seems like the kind of thing you do not want to mess around with. Is that the only way of marking the new hard drive as bootable? Can it be done with the old hard drive in, and the new one on the USB enclosure, so if i mess up it is not so serious? Can something be done if I don't have an xp installation cd?

Ginger

Sounds like the disk needs to made bootable

Usually a fixboot will do this. You need to do this in the recovery console or by doing a repair install of XP if you so desire..

You really need the XP media at this stage tho it might be on the XP disks that you downloaded...

Even if you get a bootable floppy (using a format a: /s) and then copy the file fixboot.exe to the disk should possibly do it....

But there might be an issue with NTFS permissions...

Can this thread be moved to the windows forum because at this stage it seems to be a issue with a non booting partition containing an XP install