Laptop stuck on LAN PXE Boot

[Guest]

Hi,

I have a Compaq V4000 laptop which does not load into windows xp, what happens is when I start it up, the compaq screen flashes up and goes to PXE ROM boot, it then says that media disconnected and the whole process starts again and again, when I press the keyboard to enter BIOS setup or change boot order nothing happens.

I have tried taking the RAM out and starting, when I do this I get 3 beeps, I've tried different RAM but still the same problem !

Can anyone help ?

 

[plasmastorm]

Sounds like a textbook case of faulty hard disk.

The laptop is no doubt set to boot from CD 1st then hard drive and LAN / PXE last.
If it cannot find the hard disk (either physical failure or software corruption) it will go onto the next boot device on the list.

Check in the laptop bios and see if the Hard disk is still listed there.
If it is not then there is your problem.
if it is, then take the drive out, connect it to a working machine and see if you can backup your data before most likely having to re-install windows from scratch. (assuming there is no physical fault).

 

[plasmastorm]

forgot to say it is NOT a ram problem. if it was your machine would not get as far as PXE/LAN boot message.

the 3 beeps you have herd is purely due to the fact the machine had no ram in it at the time and was alerting you to this.